Lifeline
by Viala
Summary: This is a 'Rose is pregnant by the Doctor' story, with a bit more to it than just that. However, please be warned some readers might find later scenes disturbing. It's definitely not fluff.
1. Chapter 1

Rose perched on the rim of the metal toilet and watched the second blue line grow solid. If she'd been imagining that she felt sick before, there was no doubt that she did now – as soon as the whisper of a suggestion of a line appeared in the little window, all the half-joking ideas of the past few weeks solidified into certainty and fear.

It was so hard keeping track, in the TARDIS. She'd completely lost any sense of how long she had been aboard or what day of the week it was. Every day was new, and different. It had been impossible to reassure herself when she'd begun to suspect, but it had been pretty difficult to take that suspicion seriously, either.

She was hopeless. She had completely lost it. She had no idea where she was. It was only when the Numidian tea that she'd got so keen on had started to taste so disgusting it had made her puke, that she decided she had to know.

Trouble was, there wasn't exactly a stack of Clearblue in the TARDIS medical cabinet. She'd had to pretend she wanted to go home – no reason – just to see her mum, and then she'd had to make an excuse to go shopping on her own first of all. She'd sent the Doctor on ahead to her mum's, and taken a bus to the Archway Shopping Centre. No way was she going down to the chemist's on the parade, where Doreen the pharmacist's assistant would tell the whole estate that Rose Tyler had bought a pregnancy test.

And she hadn't been able to wait until she got home to do it. The box said two minutes, so she went into the niffy public lavs next to the centre and did it there and then. Shut in a metallic cubicle, she stared at her future.

It was a gritty, whippy day – not raining, but grey as the concrete of the pavement and walls. Rose hurried up the three outside staircases to what had once been her home.

The atmosphere in the flat hit her as soon as she opened the door. Her mother was in the kitchen with a stiff, huffy back, clattering cups, and the Doctor was sprawled in his usual place on the sofa, staring at a daytime TV show with a brooding expression. As soon as she stepped into the hallway, her mother thudded down the kettle and ran to her.

"There you are. Oh, thank God."

"Yeah, here I am, Mum – what's the matter? We haven't been gone a year again, have we?" She was squashed in a bear hug.

"No, but when he turned up at the door without you – "

"Told you," said the Doctor.

"That was my fault, Mum –I just wanted to go off and do a bit of shopping, that was all."

"Well, I thought you were dead."

"I told you she wasn't," said the Doctor, changing channels with the remote. "But would she believe me?"

"Mum, don't be silly."

"Silly? I know the kind of life you lead. Every night, I lie awake worrying what the hell might be happening to you. One day, he is going to turn up alone and tell me that you're not coming back, ever."

The Doctor caught her eye and shrugged at her, but Rose was rattled. She scowled back and put down her bag.

"Oh, come on in and sit down," said Jackie. "I haven't got anything in to eat, though."

"Oi." Rose prodded the Doctor. "Make yourself useful and go and get us something from the chippie."

For once, the Doctor seemed to appreciate immediately that his absence would be a good thing. He unfurled himself willingly enough, accepted the £20 note that Rose offered him – he never had money of his own, none that you could spend anyway – and darted out.

Jackie sighed and shook her head at the door.

"Mum…"

"What is it, love?"

Suddenly, Rose realised that she was close to tears. "Mum, I've got a problem. I'm pregnant."

"Oh – my – God. Rose!"

Her mother's entirely predictable shock and displeasure felt, nonetheless, like a slap.

"Is it his?" Jackie jerked her head towards the door.

"Yeah. Of course!"

"Well, it's not that long since you had Mickey on that ship with you."

"Mum, I finished with Mickey over a year ago! When he was travelling with us, we were just friends."

"How do I know what's going on? It's not as if you ever tell me. Oh my God, Rose, he's an _alien_!"

"I know that."

"It could have two heads or something!"

"Don't be stupid, he doesn't have two heads, does he."

"No, but he does have two hearts. You told me that. What else is different?"

"Nothing. I don't know."

"How could you be so stupid?"

"I didn't know it could happen! I thought it would be impossible!"

"And what's he got to say for himself?"

"I haven't told him yet. I only just did the test. It's why I came home." She could feel the tears rising through her voice.

Jackie's expression softened, and she pulled her into a hug. "Don't cry, love. We'll sort something out, don't you worry."

Rose pressed her face into her mother's neck, inhaling perfume and fabric conditioner, deodorant and shampoo. "Not that long we got stuck somewhere, we thought we'd lost the TARDIS and we were never going to be able to leave. I said if we were going to be stranded, we should get a place together. He went all funny on me."

"Oh, Rose. I could've told you that, love. He's just the same as your dad."

"Dad married you, though."

"Yeah. Took a bit of persuading, let me tell you."

"Anyway." She broke away. "You don't understand. He's the last of the Time Lords, he's all alone. It's made him scared of getting close to anyone."

"Oh, I'm sure. They all have a sob story, that sort."

"Mum!"

"I'm sorry, I'm just telling you the truth. You think I don't know anything because I haven't been gallivanting around the galaxy in a time machine, but when it comes right down to it, men don't change – whatever planet they're from. What Mickey used to say about him was true."

"What did Mickey say?"

"That he was no different. He told me all about that other girl you met, the one he dumped years ago without so much as a thank you."

"He's nine hundred years old, Mum. So he has a few exes – what do you expect?"

"And you really think that you'll be the One? He's nine hundred years old, you're twenty."

"He said I could spend the rest of my life with him."

"Well, that was big of him."

Rose turned away.

"You came and told me first," said her mother, in a gentler voice. "That should tell you something, for a start."

"He's had kids before," she said, after a pause.

"Oh! Has he, now. And where are they?"

"They're probably dead! All his people were killed in the Time War. He only mentioned it in passing. I didn't like to ask him more."

Jackie gave her a look full of meaning. "Well," she said, "first things first. I'll make you an appointment in the morning, at the clinic, and we can get you properly checked out."

"No! Mum, I can't go to a doctor, not here! What if they do a scan and it's got two hearts?"

"Then that's something we're need to know."

"But they'll think there's something wrong with it. I can't go to a clinic here. There's no way."

"Don't be silly, Rose. You need to be seen to."

"I'll get the Doctor to take me somewhere out there, somewhere where they have alien babies all the time." A feeling of unreality and slight hysteria came over her as she formed that thought.

"No. If you think you are setting foot back in that machine and going anywhere, then you're out of your mind."

"Mum!"

"That's it, Rose. It's too dangerous. You've got a baby to think about now, you can't go back out there."

"I have to! The Doctor's not going to stop travelling and get a flat on the Powell Estate, is he?"

"If he had a shred of decency, he'd do the responsible thing. But no, I don't think he will."

"I won't leave him, Mum."

"It's not all about you any more!"

They both froze as the door to the flat clicked open and the Doctor breezed in with a bag and an aroma of roasting fat and vinegar. "Fish and chips all round. Best in the galaxy, accept no substitutes. Are we setting the table, or eating in the traditional manner with laps and fingers?"

The Doctor often seemed oblivious to atmospheres. He kicked his shoes off and made himself at home in the corner of the sofa, attacking the chips with his bare hands while Jackie slumped in her own armchair in dark glowering silence and Rose perched by the Doctor's feet, picking at her food. The smell was making her feel ill.

"Eat up," said Jackie.

"I'm not that hungry."

"Give 'em to me then. I'm starving." The Doctor snatched them from her hand.

"She needs her food," said Jackie, in a voice so laden with meaning that Rose was propelled to her feet.

"Come on, let's go for a walk," she said to the Doctor. She was terrified that her mother was going to blurt it out. If there was going to be a scene, she wanted to have some chance of controlling it.

It wasn't exactly weather for a walk, around a setting that was hardly picturesque. Darkness had closed in already, imperfectly illuminated by the few mostly broken wall lights along the alley between Churchill House and Lloyd George Towers. Upturned wheelie bins, strewn rubbish bags, discarded lager cans and smashed beer bottles, dried pools of vomit, worse things. Every time she came back, Rose noticed the details a little more. Every time, home seemed greyer.

She had the feeling that the Doctor didn't see these surroundings as squalid and depressing, or not in the same way. They had no power over him. It was all one to him, alien and exotic. It wasn't grime, it was local colour.

Three hooded youths were squatting in a stairwell as they passed onto the open concourse under the tower block.

"Lloyd George Towers," said Rose. "Rough end of town."

"I knew him!"

"You never."

"I might've!"

"You're so gay."

The hoodies hissed and jeered obscenities as they walked past. Rose thought she knew one of them, and they almost certainly recognised her. It was either her local notoriety, or the Doctor's appearance – which of course, round here, provoked ridicule in itself – which was setting them off.

"Ignore them," she muttered.

The Doctor took her hand, and turned to face them full on.

The hoodies were abruptly silenced, as if the Doctor had directed some kind of dickhead-stunning beam on them. Their faces were mostly in the shadow of their hoods, but Rose watched them cower back into the stairwell. No catcalls followed them as the Doctor and Rose moved on.

"You didn't even need to say anything," said Rose, in wonder.

"It's my evil eye." He winked it.

She waited until they were well clear of the gang, and alone under the fitful lights of the tower block. It was like standing at the edge of a very long drop and knowing she had to jump – terror so sharp it felt like she had swallowed it. "You know you said you were a dad once?" She glanced at him quickly when he said nothing, and his face was shadowed, wary. He was obviously thinking that she was going to press him to talk about that, and it was just as apparent that he didn't want to. "Well – it looks as if you're going to be one again."

She gripped his hand tighter by instinct, but she felt it loosen and fall away as he stopped and looked down at her. "Are you sure?"

Although she'd hyped herself up to expect a bad reaction, really she had been hoping and telling herself that he would leap about with glee or something. His stillness, the darkness of his eyes, the quietness of his voice, were what she suddenly knew she'd known would happen. "Yeah. I did the test. That was the real reason I wanted to come home."

He tipped his chin back and strode on, hands thrust in pockets, a little faster.

She hurried after him.

He ran his hand over his face and through his hair, then whirled round. "I mean, haven't you been _doing_ anything? To stop it?"

"I didn't think it could happen! You and me – you're an alien – I thought it'd be impossible!"

He sighed angrily. "Of course it's possible."

"What. You knew that?"

"Yes! Er – yeah." He took a step back and looked aside, suddenly shamefaced.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot! It'd been a long time!"

"Why, how many other humans have you knocked up?"

"None! That I know of… scary thought… Look, I told you. I don't exactly make a habit of it."

"What about Sarah Jane?"

"That was _years_ ago – decades. That was before you were born!"

"Well, what about Madame de sodding Pompadour? That wasn't years ago, that was like six months."

"Rose, there was a very particular set of circumstances surrounding that situation, imperatives that I doubt you'd understand, complications – "

"Did you shag her?"

He started to reply, and then his face darkened again. "What have you been doing, Rose? Six months ago, and you never mentioned it once. Have you been saving this up, waiting for the worst possible moment to fling it in my face?"

"_Fuck you_!" She burst into tears.

He held her very close, tangling his fingers into her hair, pressing his cheek against her forehead. Even through the combined thickness of her puffed jacket and his coat, she could feel the odd familiar double beat of his hearts.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, several times.

He hushed her.

What was this all about, another part of her mind thought. Why was she apologising to him, when he was the one who had been unfaithful – if fidelity meant anything to him, anyway – and then got her pregnant and seemed pissed off about it.

"That's what we were talking about, I thought," he said.

She gulped between a giggle and a sob. When she lifted her head from his neck he watched her face intensely, with his eyes serious and, perhaps, tender. It was the expression she found unreadable.

"Your mother is not going to want me back up there. She'll kill me or something."

Rose shook her head.

"Daleks, no problem. Cybermen, hmm – your mother on the warpath, no no no. I think I'll keep my head down for tonight."

"I'd better get back."

"Want to do a runner?"

They were just across the square from where the TARDIS was tucked into its usual corner. It was very tempting. His hands were pressing hers, and her whole body was flooded with warmth and relief that he hadn't decided to dump here there and then.

"No, Mum'd worry. I'd better go to her. I'll see you in the morning, yeah?"

She watched him from the top of the second flight of stairs as he let himself into the TARDIS, and waved.

Without warning, black crashing terror slammed into her like a freezing wave. What if the TARDIS engines started, and the blue box began to flash and fade? She was simultaneously gripped by an urge to tear back down the stairs and claw at the door, and a total inability to move at all. The panic attack ebbed away as the seconds passed and the TARDIS stayed silent and solid. If left her chest pounding and her legs shaking. She wobbled up the last steps to her mother's level and only just made it through the door and into the bathroom before she threw up.

"Rose! Are you OK, love?"

She flushed the toilet and pushed past Jackie, who was nosing round the half-opened door. "Yeah. Just leave me alone for tonight, Mum, OK?"

Safely in her bedroom, she stuck a pillow over her face and used it to muffle her tears.

"_Rose_."

His voice, in her blood, filling her. Too far away. Forever, far away. Utter longing, utter hopelessness.

She sucked air in a rush and shot upright.

"Rose!"

It was her mother's voice, and a gentle tap-tap on the door.

Rose sat still in bed as the intensity of the dream-feelings washed away, still tingling with the after-shock and the relief that whatever it had been about, it hadn't been real. The problem she actually had seemed almost comforting, in contrast.

Her mother had brought her tea, in her ancient Carebear mug.

Rose shifted upwards in bed and cupped it in her lap.

"Feeling any better, love?"

"Yeah. OK at the moment."

"I'm sorry about some of the things I said last night. It was the shock."

"Yeah. I know."

"Now, I've made you an appointment at the health centre for two this afternoon – and before you start, they don't have to do any tests, they can just make sure you're healthy. Do it for me."

"OK."

Jackie hovered for a moment, as if waiting for her to say something else, then left her in peace.

Rose sat back against the pillow, sipped her tea and thought about her conversation with the Doctor last night. Surprisingly, she had fallen asleep easily enough after a brief angry storm of tears. She supposed she had, after all, been reassured. She was glad she hadn't yielded to the strong impulse to go with his suggestion that they take off there and then, but she was incredibly heartened that he had made it. If he still wanted her to go with him, then he hadn't rejected her because of the baby.

The baby itself, well – she knew how the Doctor's mind worked. He was intensely focussed on the present. Funny that, for someone who called himself a Time Lord, but she guessed her rarely thought nine minutes into the future, let alone nine months. The prospect of being the father to a child six months or whenever down the line from now was probably not something he could make real to himself. Intuitively, she understood this.

That was why she had felt guilty last night over the Madame de Pompadour business. Of course she had known, at the time, that he'd slept with her. She'd known as soon as she and Reinette had faced each other. There was always that connection of understanding between women who'd had the same man – she'd had a strangely similar encounter with Tracey Cruikshank in the newsagents on the parade once, the day after Kevin Stone had gone off with her at Haley Dunwell's party. She hadn't liked it – the Doctor and his French tart, that was – but she'd swallowed down her hurt because it wasn't as if he was ever going to see her again, and she knew he was cut up about the way they parted, and she was too much in love with him to risk rocking the boat when he had come back to her anyway. In fact he'd come to her the same night, sad and tense, and she hadn't exactly kicked him out of bed.

He was right. If she was going to have made a fuss, she should have done it at the time. He must have assumed that she'd understood and forgiven him, because she'd let him make love to her that night and said nothing about it.

It surprised her how protective she felt, how responsible for him. He sometimes talked about how he'd promised her mother to look after her, but despite the eight hundred and eighty year age difference, she often felt that she was the one taking care of him. He was so vulnerable – sometimes like a kid himself – and he needed her.

She had to go to him and make things all right again.

She put down the half-empty cup on the bedside table, and lifted the curtain. From her bedroom window, she could just see the edge of the TARDIS across the concourse three storeys below.

Except, she couldn't. There were two boys playing wheelies on mountain bikes, and a black bin liner scudding across the concrete – but no blue box anywhere.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose slithered down the steps in her bare feet, just about clutching her dressing gown around her pyjamas, and raced across the concourse to where the TARDIS wasn't. There was no sign of it parked further back, or anywhere around that she could see. She'd thought frantically that maybe he'd just moved it a bit for some reason.

She sank down onto the low wall that ran along the edge of the alley. Her limbs felt lights, as if she was going to float away.

"No," she said. "No, no, no."

Then she remembered the Doctor using the same words last night.

Oh God, why hadn't she gone with him when he suggested it? She'd known for some time that she had to hang on tight if she wanted not to end up as another accidental discard in the trail of lives the Doctor littered behind him. She'd been determined not to be another Sarah Jane.

Surely, the baby was a lifeline that ought to have kept him tethered.

Because she _had_ thought about it, hadn't she. It had crossed her mind, more than once, afterwards, lying there in bed with him chattering nonsense. Some barely expressed thoughts along lines of, "Good job he's not an ordinary bloke, or this would be dead risky." And on those occasions, which she remembered quite clearly, she could have asked him if it was possible for him to get her pregnant. On a lazy barely conscious level, she had chosen not to.

She wasn't going to give into panic and despair. Maybe he just needed a bit of space. Like, three galaxies' worth. Or maybe he'd heard on the news last night that a spaceship had landed in Australia or something and he'd popped to the other side of the planet to take a look. Whatever, he'd be back.

She let herself back into the flat very quietly, hoping to sneak in before Jackie realised she had gone out. This never worked, ever. The flat was so small that every tiny movement could be heard anywhere, and anyway, Jackie was an expert. She confronted her in the hallways.

"What are you doing going out in your dressing gown?"

"Needed some fresh air."

"And your bare feet! For goodness' sake, Rose! Come in and get some breakfast inside you."

She had a moment of stupid hope that she would simply find the Doctor at the breakfast table, shovelling cornflakes into himself. He wasn't. Trying to hang onto her composure, Rose let her mother put down a bowl of Frosties and another mug of tea in front of her.

"Has… has the Doctor been here this morning yet?" she asked, her voice bright and brittle with affected casualness.

"No, love. I phoned up."

"You phoned him?"

"It's a her. You remember, Dr Hawthorne at the centre. She saw you when you had your tonsils out. She's nice. Oh, I don't think you've been since then, never anything wrong with you, is there. But you'll be all right with her."

"No, I don't mean the doctor at the health centre, I mean my Doctor."

"Dr Hawthorne is your doctor, as well as mine. At least, that's who I made the appointment with, they seemed all right about it. You haven't signed up with some other doctor and not told me?"

"Mum, _the_ Doctor. Stop messing about." She was determined to keep his disappearance from her for as long as possible, just in case there was some trivial explanation for his absence, but her mum was winding her up. "You know he didn't come back here last night cos of you? I don't want all this, not now. Why can't you just be nice to him?"

"To who, love? Who are you talking about?"

"Oh, for God's sake." Rose clattered her spoon in the cereal bowl, splashing milk over the table, and stormed out of the room.

She took refuge in her room, desperate not to break down and expose what had happened. It was loyalty, and pride. She couldn't bear her mother to think badly of him, and she couldn't bear her to imagine that she'd been abandoned. Not that it was going to take long for it all to become apparent, unless he turned up very soon.

Her mother pursued her. "What's the matter now, sweetheart?"

"Nothing! Just, like I said. I wish you'd give him a break. It's like you think he doesn't have any feelings, or anything. The way you go on at him, it bothers him."

"Hang on, love. I've missed a bit here. Who are we talking about?"

She stared sullenly. "The Doctor. Who do you think."

"Which doctor, love?"

"Stop it! Are you trying to pretend he doesn't exist, or something?" She was suddenly on the verge of tears. "That's horrible! Just stop it!"

Jackie sat by her on the bed. "I don't know what I'm supposed to have done now. Honestly, I don't know why I bother. I'm trying, Rose, I really am, but how do you think I feel? You come home and tell me you're pregnant, you won't tell me who the father is, and now you're mouthing off at me for something or other and I don't have a clue who or what you're on about."

"You what?"

"You're going to need me, you know, if you're going to have any kind of life after the baby's born, since its dad doesn't seem to want to know."

"I did tell you who the father is!"

"Oh, so I suppose you didn't stand in that kitchen giving me any amount of grief last night about how it was none of my business?"

"No."

"Go on then, remind me. Who is it?"

"The Doctor, Mum. You know? Remember? The bloke I've been with for the past two years?"

"Well, this is news to me. Doctor who?"

Rose closed her eyes. Her mother wasn't faking, this was no wind-up. She was no kind of actress, her mum. Could never hide anything, it was always all out there.

"Not Dr Alluwalia from the health centre?"

"No, Mum."

"He's a nice-looking boy. Still, they can be funny, can't they – their mums usually want them to marry some girl they've picked out themselves."

"You don't remember him, do you."

"The doctor you're talking about? Rose, I had no idea you were seeing any doctor. But, well, I'm glad you've told me something at any rate. Is there a problem with him? Is he married or something?"

"He's a nine hundred year old alien from a planet that was destroyed in a huge interdimensional war," said Rose, staring ahead. "And he's gone."

She saw her mother's face harden. "We can talk about it later, when you've decided to be sensible." She paused at the door. "I phoned you in sick this morning, but you'll have to go back tomorrow. We're going to need every penny now, God help us."

"Go back where?"

"To work. If you think you're going to sit around on your bum watching telly all day like half the single mums on this estate, then you've got another think coming."

Rose said nothing, as closed her eyes again until her mother had finally shut the door.

Either her mother had flipped and lost it completely, or something beyond sinister had happened.

For some reason, she began by pulling open her underwear drawer. It was full, stuffed with a chaotic tangle of clean knickers. Surely the night before there had been about five old bra and panties sets, neatly folded by Jackie. All her current underwear was in the same sort of jumble in her bedroom in the TARDIS.

Her handbag was in the hall where she'd dropped it last night. The pregnancy test stick was where she had shoved it, in the front flap of the bag, still showing a bright blue line in both little windows. She fumbled desperately for her mobile, and scrolled down the contacts list.

The TARDIS wasn't there.

"No, no, no."

Her mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Oh, look at you. Come on, sweetheart. I'm sorry. Come and sit down and finish your breakfast. It'll make you feel better, I promise you."

Still dazed, Rose allowed herself to be shepherded back to the table. She stared at the food, unable to contemplate eating it. "I've already had breakfast."

"You didn't touch a thing. Now come on, you've got to look after yourself."

"Mum – do you remember what happened at Christmas?"

"Last Christmas?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing much, nothing special. We had Betty from upstairs down, cos she would've been on her own otherwise. Oh, and she spilled a whole bottle of sherry all over the carpet, we had to get the cleaners in after Boxing Day, it smelled like a trifle through there. That's all I can think of. What's this leading up to? Something to do with your mysterious doctor boyfriend?"

"You don't remember him being with us?" She decided she would leave about the bit about an alien invasion.

"No love. He wasn't. And I don't know how you had time to see him on Christmas Day, I'm sure you never left the house."

"So, I haven't been away or anything."

"Away, to where?"

"Nothing. It's OK." She flicked through the contacts list again and saw MICKEY.

She'd never deleted his name from the directory, just because he was in another universe. While her mum started clearing away the breakfast dishes, Rose hit dial and listened.

"Yeah?" It was a grunt, wary and tinged with some negative emotion, and it was Mickey's voice.

The shock was like a jolt of electricity. Rose let the phone drop onto the table, and cut the connection with a jab.

"Feel sick," she mumbled, and dashed to the bathroom.

This, for sure, was still real. She knelt on the carpeted floor of the bathroom, inhaling the smell of bleach and lavender, too scared for tears but heaving with nausea. Throwing up had given her no relief.

Somehow, she had ended up in her life as it would have been if she'd never met the Doctor. Was that right? How could it be? If she hadn't met the Doctor that day, in the basement of Hendricks, the Autons would have killed her. Well, maybe this was the alternative universe where she'd not gone back into the story at all that night to collect the lottery money. She would have headed out home with the other girls, got on the bus home with a bag of chips, and learned about the explosion at the story later, on the telly.

Was that right? But how about last Christmas? There _had_ been a Sycorax invasion and everyone in London, at least, had experienced it first hand. Every Londoner's memories of last Christmas were surely dominated by the giant ship hovering over the city. Even her mum couldn't be so focussed on the trivial that Betty from upstair's sherry-spilling could be remembered as the major event of the day.

But the baby, the Doctor's baby – _it_ was still there. She was still pregnant, no doubt about that.

Nightmarish speculations began to crowd in on her. What if she'd somehow swapped consciousness with an alternative universe version of herself, one who hadn't met the Doctor that day. Maybe the whole Sycorax invasion had been brought into being by her subsequent involvement with the Doctor, through some complex chain of cosmic causality. And this Rose had continued to live her mundane life, and had simply got herself up the duff by some sleazy bloke she knew Jackie would disapprove of. She could be lying here with some stranger's baby inside her.

She retched again, the last dregs of breakfast.

"No. No, no, no."

She clamped her hand over her lower abdomen.

"Oh dear," said her mother.

Rose cursed herself for forgetting to lock the door, again.

"You have got it bad. Still, they say, the sicker you are, the safer the baby."

"Mum. I do want a scan. I – I – want to make sure the baby's all right."

Fresh air made her feel better physically. First she returned to where the TARDIS wasn't, and walked carefully around the patch of ground to see if she could spot any flattening of the grass or any signs that might suggest a moderately heavy transdimensional spaceship had been standing there the day before. Then she flipped open her phone again and, pacing restlessly, hit dial on Mickey's name.

The phone at the other end burred several times before his voice answered. "What do you want, Rose? What are you calling me for?"

"I need to see you. Where are you?"

There was a long pause. "Where I usually am at half nine in the morning. At work."

"At Bob's garage?"

"Yeah, where else."

"Can I meet you there?"

Another pause. "At the caff. Look, what's this about?"

"I'll tell you when I see you." She snapped the phone shut.

There was a small greasy-spoon café at the corner of the street where Bob's garage was, the place where Mickey had worked between leaving school and joining them on the TARDIS. It made sense that in a world where the Doctor hadn't come into their lives, he would still be there. He certainly hadn't been going anywhere else. She remembered that was one of the things that had vaguely frustrated her about him when they had been going out, that the height of his ambition was one day, maybe, to have his own garage.

He was already waiting for her at one of the formica tables, wearing a wary, sullen expression.

Her heart turned over as she closed the café door with a jangle. She had never expected to see him again, and she had no idea on what terms they were meeting now. Clearly there had been some argument between them, but what the status of their relationship was supposed to be, she could only guess.

"I've got fifteen minutes," he said. "Took an early tea break."

"OK." She sat opposite him. "Mickey, you're going to think I'm off on one, all right, but just listen for a bit. Does the Doctor or the TARDIS mean anything to you? The Cybermen?"

"Are they new bands, or something?"

"So that's a no, then. All right. This is going to sound even weirder. You and me, what happened?"

He scowled and broke eye contact. "You tell me, I still don't understand it."

"We've split up, yeah?"

"What's this all about?"

"Hang on, I said it was going to sound like I was off my trolley."

"Well, that's what I think you were. There was no reason that I could make sense of. It's not as if you had another bloke or anything, not that you'd tell me anyway, and if there was I'd've heard." He glanced up at her, a quick hurt look.

"OK… when was this?"

"You when it was. Stop messing about."

"But just imagine for a moment that I don't, Mickey. That I've lost my memory or something."

"What is this?"

"Just tell me."

"Almost a year ago. This time last year."

She looked at the window, where sleet was spitting against the glass with its faded stencilled letters spelling AHMED'S CAFÉ backwards. So, a little later than she had finally dumped Mickey in her own reality, but not by much. If that had any significance or bearing on the situation, she had no idea.

Fear began to take hold again. The surroundings were depressing, and despite the weather she felt too hot, and Mickey's hurt and hostility grated against her raw nerves.

"You know it's too late if you've had a change of heart," said Mickey. "I'm happy with Trish. There's no going back. No way am I going to do to her what you did to me."

Oh, Trisha Delaney. Rose saw at once that he wasn't particularly happy with her.

"It's OK, I've got someone else as well."

"So what did you want to see me about, then?"

She was stumped. Because she'd got so used to Mickey being on the inside of the team, she'd had some deep-rooted idea that she'd be able to tell him everything and he'd be full of suggestions. But this was the old Mickey, who was like a stranger now. The old Mickey, untouched by the direct experience of everything the Doctor had brought into their lives, simply wouldn't understand or want to listen if she tried to explain. "Can I go round and use your computer?" she blurted out. "I want to check something on the Internet."

"I suppose. Trish would have a fit if she caught you there, though."

"Is she likely to be around there now?"

"No, she's at work."

So Trisha was living with him. Peversely, Rose felt a pang.

Mickey fished in his pockets and slapped a set of keys on the table between them. "On you go. Just don't leave anything lying about, or she'll notice."

Mickey's flat didn't smell right. Instead of an atmosphere of unwashed socks, unemptied bins and open beer cans, there was a sickly odour of cleaning fluid and room perfume. It was unusually tidy, and there were pastel cushions on the sofa, a new rug on the living room floor, and prints of cute animals on the walls.

Curious, Rose glanced into the kitchen. Every surface and appliance gleamed. There was a tree of matching bright mugs and a floral-printed kitchen roll on a mounted holder.

The bed had a patchwork throw and an arrangement of embroidered pillows. Trisha Delaney had evidently got her feet well under the Ikea coffee table.

Even the computer looked like it had been polished. Carefully, almost worried about leaving smudges on the mouse mat, Rose turned on the system and got up a search engine.

She realised her hands were shaking as she typed in THE DOCTOR. This was the moment of truth, really.

Pages and pages of links about hospitals and medical doctors came back. No links to the many sites speculating about the mysterious traveller who appeared and disappeared throughout history.

She tried the names Clive and Elton Pope. Clive, who appeared to be alive and well, ran a web site about UFO sightings over Britain and the UK Government's involvement in the 1969 Moon Landing Conspiracy. She got one hit for Elton, a bad picture of an amateur rock band from a local newspaper. It was him though, dated a month ago. His arm was around a girl she just about recognised as Ursula.

Death hadn't come to these people. The Doctor hadn't been here.

It wasn't just that he herself hadn't met him. He was _gone_.

"But you can go back in time to any point in history, or forward. Why can't you go back to before the war, when there were other Time Lords?" She had asked that once, long ago, when she had still been fairly clueless, and when the Doctor had still been as he used to be.

He'd answered grimly, looking away from her. "Think I hadn't thought of that?"

"No… I was just asking why you can't. Cos it wouldn't be crossing your own timeline or anything if you went back to before you were even born."

"The Time War was just what it sounds like, a war across all space, all time, all dimensions, all realities. You lose, you're gone. Phut." He snapped his fingers. "My people were _removed_ from the fabric of space/time. They no longer ever existed."

"But you… what about you – why are you still here?"

He said nothing, and turned further away, and carried on stabbing at the guts of the TARDIS through an open floor panel.

Rose remembered that she had hovered in desperate awkwardness, regretting having said anything at all, wondering whether to apologise but sensing that this would be to wade deeper into the mire. In the end she'd slunk away and that had been the end of that conversation, forever. She'd felt, ever after, that the Time War was a taboo topic and anything to do with his past was hedged around with no-go warning signs. That was why she hadn't asked him anything about his children, even though she was ravenously curious.

He didn't do the brooding silences of his old self any more, but she was still afraid of his dark flipside.

Could he have been erased from time and space somehow, like the rest of the Time Lords? But how, and why?

No, it didn't make sense. His homeworld had been destroyed and all his people killed, but those who had been touched by them still remembered them. She was sure of that. Jack had known about the Time Lords, even though he'd thought they were just a legend. And now, it seemed that she was the only one who had any memory of the Doctor's existence.

Was it the baby? Was it a lifeline in a different way from how she'd imagined this morning? Was it keeping her tied to reality, when the rest of the universe had been warped out of shape by some bizarre catastrophe?

She began to feel nauseous again as she reached the flats, and sat down on the bottom step for a rest. She missed Jack, suddenly and intensely. She'd only ever half-bought the Doctor's claim that he'd asked to stay behind on Gamestation and help rebuild after the Dalek invasion. He'd been another accidental discard, she reckoned glumly, and the Doctor had never mentioned him again.

And she _hadn't cared_. She'd more or less known the Doctor was more or less lying about Jack's departure, and she'd gone along with it because it was all change anyway and she was alone with the Doctor again and things were moving on rapidly at that point. Looking back, Jack had been this huge horny catalyst in her relationship with the Doctor, somehow clarifying things in his own libidinous terms, giving her the impetus to finish with Mickey and setting a clock ticking on a countdown to consummation. He was just so outrageous and upfront, he had brought sex on board the TARDIS even though she personally wouldn't have touched him with a bargepole once she learned he swung both ways.

But now, she missed him. He'd know what to do. She needed help, she needed someone to _talk_ to.

Jackie was watching television when Rose came back in. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah, the walk did me good."

"I'll get some lunch on then. Will sandwiches be OK?"

"That would be great," said Rose, realising that despite everything, she had swung from sickness to galloping hunger. She felt like her body was as much at odds with her as the rest of reality.

"Sit yourself down then, and I'll bring you something through. It's interesting, this – she's doing a programme about what's going on in Chinese orphanages. Terrible."

Blankly, Rose stared at the screen.

"Mao Li is eighteen months old," the presenter was saying, lifting up a tiny, apathetic scrap of baby from a bare cot. "She's just one of the two hundred baby girls abandoned at birth every week in this province of North-West China alone."

The camera panned in for a close-up of the presenter, gazing tenderly at the wizened monkey face of the underweight child. At the back of Rose's brain, it had registered that the voice was familiar. With a shock of surprise, she recognised Sarah Jane Smith.

"Mao Li weighs around what a healthy child should weigh at six months." The presenter looked straight into the camera. It was definitely her. "Without proper care, she is going to die soon. And there are thousands like her all over China."

"On second thoughts, don't watch that," said Jackie from the doorway, switching the television off with the remote. "That's not the sort of thing you want to be upsetting yourself with in your condition."

"Mum! Do you know who that was?"

"Of course I know who that was, that's Sarah Jane Smith."

"You've heard of her, then?"

Her mother stared at her. "Everyone's heard of her." She shook her head. "Where have you been?"

"Good question," said Rose, to herself, as her mother went back through to the kitchen.

She found her mobile and scrolled the contacts.

This time, she wasn't disappointed. The name and number that she had programmed in a few months ago, at Sarah Jane's urging, and had always hoped she would never have to use.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a cautious, curious note in her voice as she said, "Hello?", but it certainly sounded like Sarah Jane.

The number that she had been given all that time ago was for a mobile, so it would be showing Rose's number. One that was, Rose presumed, unknown to the Sarah of this reality.

She swallowed her first words. She was never brilliant on the phone with strangers or people she didn't know very well, and she had spent quite a few minutes working up the courage to make this call and rehearsing in her mind what the hell she was going to say if Sarah herself answered. As soon as she heard her voice, Rose's mind froze and the opening she had planned got caught in the lump in her throat. "Hello, is that Sarah Jane Smith?" she managed.

"Sorry, who is this speaking, please?"

"Uh, you probably don't know me, but my name's Rose Tyler. I was wondering if you knew anything about the Doctor." Oh, brilliant.

"Could I ask how you got this number, if you don't mind?"

"Er, you gave it to me, a while back. We've met. Look, you're an investigative journalist, aren't you?"

"Sometimes," she said in what sounded to Rose like an amused tone.

"Well, I've got a story for you. When we met, you gave me this number, and you told me to get in touch if I ever needed to. If the Doctor, or the TARDIS, or – or – Daleks mean anything to you, then I think we should meet up."

There was such a long silence on the other end that Rose thought she might have hung up. She took the phone briefly from her ear to check the connection on the screen – realising as she did so that her hands were sticky with sweat – and it still said SJ SMITH.

"All right," said Sarah's voice, and Rose fumbled the phone back to her ear. "I can meet you this afternoon, if you can be in Chelsea at about five thirty."

"Yeah. That'll be great. Thanks."

"Carlucci's in Andover Square, SW3."

Rose scribbled down the address. "Half five, yeah."

"See you there." She broke the connection.

Rose squinted at the shifting, grainy shades of black and white and attempted to make out anything recognisable. It was like trying to see an image in one of those 'magic eye' pictures you got a few years ago, where something that looked like a random burst of coloured dots would turn into a three-dimensional roaring tiger if you crossed your eyes long enough. She'd never been able to make those work, either.

The radiologist was enthusiastic, anyway. "Oo, look, now there's its little foot, can you see?"

Rose could not.

"Oh yes!" said Jackie, doubtfully Rose thought. "So can you tell how far gone she is?"

"I'm just going to capture an image when I get a good one of the whole baby, head to toe, and then we can measure it, but just from its stage of development I'd say around twelve weeks? Would that seem right to you, Rose?"

"Um, yeah, I suppose." She had no clue. Twelve weeks, though – bloody hell, that was three months already.

She had spent a surreal half-hour with a brisk, jolly midwife, answering questions about her drinking and smoking habits and diet, and being told what her 'options for care and delivery' were. With Jackie at her elbow, chipping in with her contribution if Rose so much as hesitated, she felt nonetheless like she was here under false pretences. It was uncomfortable, unsettling.

"And was this a planned pregnancy?" the midwife asked, from a ticklist.

Rose shook her head.

"Here, don't put that down," said Jackie. "I don't want that on her record."

"Don't worry, Mrs Tyler, it's just for the statistics. You've no idea when your last period was?"

"No. Sorry. A while ago, that's all."

"Well, I think the best thing then would be to do a scan straight away, and then we can establish the probable gestation of the foetus pretty accurately. Then we can get you a delivery date to work to, and we'll know where we are! If that's OK with you?"

It was all, really, that Rose had wanted to get out of the appointment, but when it came to it, she was scared. Particularly as there turned out to be an almost immediate slot with the radiologist, so she and her mother were sent straight through to wait in another ante-room. Rose gazed around at the posters informing her of the inadvisability of smoking during pregnancy and the virtues of breastfeeding afterwards. There was a hugely pregnant woman sitting opposite her, holding hands with a good-looking young man. The pair were murmuring together and patting at her engorged stomach.

To her horror, she felt her eyes filling with tears and she hardly dared blink or breathe in case she sniffed and her mother noticed.

The spilled silent tears had dried down the sides of her cheeks by the time they were called in, and now Rose was still pretending to be moved by her first glimpse of a baby that looked to her like a few black blurs.

"Let me just try over here to get a better top to toe picture of the little chap," said the radiologist, chirpily. "Oo, look, there's a really good angle. Look, can you see? There's its head, there's its chest, and there's a little hand giving us a wave!"

And suddenly, Rose did see. The ink-test blots leapt into focus and became a tiny human – humanoid form.

"And there's a good strong heartbeat! Can you see it pulsing?"

"Oh yes, Rose! Look!"

The radiologist carried on probing with the cold sticky scanner, and the clear picture melted away.

"Any history of twins in the family?" said the radiologist, after what Rose then realised had been quite a silence, and her tone was suddenly less breezy.

"No," said Jackie, then, "Oh my God."

"Don't panic just yet! Just thought I could detect a second heartbeat there. Hang on!" She removed the scanner, squirted more jelly onto it, and reapplied it.

"Oh my God," said Jackie again. "We've only got a two bedroom flat as it is!"

"Hush a moment, please."

The blurry baby, with its oversized head and chest, swam back onto the screen, and the radiologist turned a knob on the machine. The room was filled with a rapid pit-pat like the heartbeat of a tiny bird.

"That's one…" muttered the radiologist.

She moved the probe along, and the sound stopped. Back, and it started again, louder. But this time, there was a clear second, slightly asynchronous beat alongside it.

Jackie drew in a sharp breath. "Oh! Rose! There it is! Oh my God, twins."

"I can't find the twin," said the radiologist, not in the least cheerful now. "Don't worry, stay here, I'm going to get some colleagues to come and take a look."

The double heartbeat, the distinctive rhythm that she had listened to in fascination many times, one ear lying against the right side of his chest and her hand pressed over the left to catch the ping-pong like echo. The numbness broke like ice, and relief and excitement and fear and loneliness, all at once, gushed out in a flood of tears.

It didn't matter that she was crying, because it was what everyone expected. Her mother sat with her arms around her, mopping her with tissues, and Dr Hawthorne was terribly kind.

"There may be nothing wrong at all," she said, several times. "There probably isn't a twin, or not a viable one at any rate, because I'm sure it would be possible to see it on a scan with the equipment we have here if there were a fully-formed second foetus in there. There are a number of explanations for the apparent second heartbeat, including the possibility of simple instrument error. I'm a GP, not an obstetrician or an embryologist, so I don't want to speculate too much. Mr Hussein at St Mary's is probably the country's leading antenatal cardiologist, and they have better equipment up there anyway which will be able to get a much clearer picture of what's going on. You'll be in good hands there. And please don't spend the next week worrying. There may be nothing wrong at all."

Rose let her mother huddle her out of the clinic, like she needed to be shielded from the weather and supported, but she broke away as they reached the street. "I'm OK now, Mum. Really."

"Well, I'm not sure I am."

Impulsively, guilty, Rose folded her into a hug. "It might be nothing, like Dr Hawthorne said."

"God knows, I never wanted you to end up like me with a baby at your age, but Rose love, now it's happened… I couldn't bear anything to go wrong."

"I know," said Rose, moved but composed. The stormburst of tears had cleared the air inside her, and she felt calm and, in fact, elated. Whatever was going on, she was certain now that the baby was all right – that it was the Doctor's. The knowledge had given her renewed courage and determination to get out of here, and find a way back to him.

Carlucci's was between an interior décor shop displaying hand-made tiles and hand-painted lampshades, and a French patisserie. She walked into an intense odour of newly-ground coffee and expensive bakery, and took in the gleaming, spitting cappuchino machine that seemed to cover the entire back counter. The place was busy, mostly with thin women in their late thirties, wearing smart casuals and perfect make-up, chatting and cuddling designer-clad babies on their laps. No way would anyone call this a caff.

Feeling conspicuous and scruffy, Rose looked around for Sarah Jane. It took her a few moments to spot her, because she had positioned herself at a table in a little nook by the bar and was wearing dark glasses. Indoors. Maybe that was what you did round these posh parts, but Rose thought she looked daft.

No-one paid any attention to Rose as she made her way between the Sloaney mums and slipped into the chair opposite Sarah.

"Hi," she muttered uncomfortably. "I'm Rose."

Rose had the feeling that Sarah was appraising her for a few moments with hidden eyes, before she removed the shades, unsmiling. "We haven't met before," she said.

Rose stared helplessly at the woman who, more than thirty years ago, had been her. Still stunning in her fifties, Sarah Jane might have been better educated than Rose and from a different class, but in the ways that mattered to the Doctor, three decades ago she must have been just the same. Very young, very pretty, with only a small foothold on adult life and prepared to throw any plans of her own aside to be with him.

Rose didn't know how many others there had been. She reckoned, loads. And she reckoned that the girls, at any rate, were always pretty much like that.

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry, this is going to sound really, really odd, but I wanted to know if you remember anything about the Doctor."

"The Doctor," Sarah repeated, with slow emphasis.

She seemed to be waiting for more, so Rose ploughed on. "He doesn't have another name, not that anyone knows. He's a traveller. He has something called the TARDIS."

"Describe it."

"It's a big blue box, a bit like those old phone booths except a bit larger and made all of wood. The police used to use them like fifty years ago or something. It has a light on top? Anyway." She floundered.

Sarah sipped her coffee. "Anything else you can tell me about this Doctor?"

"Yes. He used to have a, er, dog called K9. And he's been involved with the Daleks. Cybermen. Does all this just sound stupid or do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

Sarah looked as though she was struggling to keep her face neutral, but her eyes grew wide with a curious expression between amazement and eagarness. She shook her head slowly. "I never told anyone," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Excuse me?"

Rose jumped, tingling with hope and excitement, as two teenaged boys banged up to the table. Although they were wearing baggy trousers and hoodies, their hair was neat, their cheeks were ruddy, and their accents were plummy. "Could I have your autograph, please?" asked the taller of the two boys.

"Your programme on international pornography masterminds was awesome," said the other, politely.

"You shouldn't have been watching that, boys," said Sarah Jane as she signed the napkins they each gave her.

The boys grinned and ambled off.

"Come on." She stood up. "There's too much chance of being interrupted, even in here. Let's go back to my house, and we can talk properly."


	4. Chapter 4

Sarah Jane lived just across the square from Carlucci's, in the last of a long row of tall, grand Georgian townhouses, the sort that looked like they had been faced with royal icing. Even though this was a very central area, within a few minutes' walk of London's major shopping streets, the square wasn't a through-route for traffic and consequently, was as peaceful as a leafy village. Sarah led her through a flagstone hallway with a magnificent staircase curving upwards, and down a smaller flight of stairs at the end of a corridor to a huge, light-filled kitchen. It was, seriously, the nicest house Rose had ever been inside. On Earth, anyway.

There was a teenage girl sitting at the kitchen's wooden table, with what looked like schoolwork spread in front of her. She had the long, straight, shiny hair typical of posh girls, and was wearing a loosely-knotted striped tie and v-neck school jumper. "Shall I go?" she asked, with a quick glance at Rose, gathering her books together as she spoke.

"If you don't mind, Tamsin."

"No problem. Ginny and Arabella are coming round at eight, is that OK?"

"Sounds like a fait accompli."

"Thanks, Mum. We'll be quiet."

"My younger daughter Tamsin," said Sarah, once the girl had clopped up the stairs with her books. "She's used to strange people coming here at odd times. She knows to clear the coast."

"How many kids have you got?" asked Rose, with a strange feeling. The 'real' Sarah Jane – or at least, the Sarah Jane of her own reality – was childless.

"Three. The other two are a bit older. Lavinia's at university and Matthew's working for a charity in Afghanistan."

Rose nodded.

Sarah had been fiddling with a complicated coffee machine onone of the kitchen's many marble-topped work surfaces, but she left it to hiss and pulled up a chair at the table. She was shining with some kind of barely-contained emotion. "Tell me everything, from the start."

"Well – that's difficult, cos it's going to sound like I'm completely off my rocker, if I do."

"I'm used to hearing some fairly outlandish stories – Rose, isn't it? Just try me. Tell me a bit about yourself, to begin with."

"OK then. I'm nearly twenty-one, I was just living with my mum in East London – the Powell Estate, don't suppose you've heard of it."

Sarah Jane shook her head.

"It's a long way from here. Don't get me wrong, it's not a sink estate or anything, it's not that bad, but – well, compared to here, I mean."

"I understand."

"Two years ago, I was working in a shop in the West End – Henricks, you probably have heard of that. And I met a man called the Doctor. Just that, no other name. He was a traveller. OK. He turned out to be an alien. From another planet alien, I mean. He looked human, but he wasn't. He had two hearts, for a start." She had been talking to the table once she'd got to the alien bit, but now she risked glancing up at Sarah jane to see how she was taking this. She was looking amazed again, eager, as if she were still reigning in that anxious delight. "You do know him, don't you. You know what I'm talking about."

"For years," said Sarah Jane, "I've had dreams. Probably starting from when I was around your age, I've had very vivid dreams, about a man called the Doctor – not a man, but an alien, with two hearts. And he takes me into a large blue box…."

"That's the TARDIS."

"Tell me what happens once you get inside."

"It's bigger. Much bigger on the inside than the outside."

"A huge, beautiful spaceship – a time ship?"

"Yes," said Rose.

"And you step straight into a control room with a huge, central column that rises up and down when the ship's in flight – and circles set into the walls, everywhere." Sarah Jane's face was radiant – then she broke off, put her hand to her mouth, and looked aside with tears glistening in her eyes. "I've never told anyone," she said, after a moment. "Let alone written about it. Not my husband, not anyone. Yet I've had these dreams every few weeks for years. How could you possibly know?"

"It's OK," said Rose. "To me, these weren't dreams. This really happened, this _is_ happening. But when I woke up this morning, the Doctor had disappeared and no-one remembers anything about him. My mum, my ex-boyfriend, they both knew him really well, but it's as if he never existed."

"Why me, why did you call me?"

"Because the way things should be, what I remember, you used to travel with him like I do now. When you were – when you were my age. And we met, here on Earth, a few months ago. You gave me your number and said to come and find me if I ever needed to."

"Why would you need to?"

"If he ever dumped me, is what you meant, or I left him."

"Ah."

"But here – in this reality – you haven't really met him either, have you. You've just had dreams."

"Very compelling dreams," said Sarah, after a pause. "They've haunted me. It is the most extraordinary thing that you should come here and be able to tell me what happens in them. I don't know what to think about it."

"Well, I don't know what to do. I suppose I was hoping I'd come here and you'd remember too, and be wondering what was going on, same as me. And maybe be able to help put things right."

"How could I do that?"

"I don't know. Something might have happened to you, when you were with the Doctor, that'd help make sense of it. I mean, the Doctor and me, we've been to a parallel universe, where everything is a bit different – like, they have air ships instead of planes, for a start – and there are parallel versions of people, that different things have happened to. Like, my dad died when I was a baby, but in the parallel universe he was still alive, and he'd got rich, and he and my mum were living in this great big mansion. But I'd never been born. She'd given my name to a dog!"

"A dog?"

Rose snorted. "A hairy little Yorkie, you know the sort that look like toilet brushes? But this isn't a parallel universe, because there isn't a double of me. It's like, I don't know, an alternative timeline, what would've happened if the Doctor was never here. You might have come across something like that and know what to do about it. You didn't dream about it, did you?"

Sarah shook her head slowly. "My dreams are vivid pictures of the Doctor – the time ship – terrifying metal monsters called Darlicks? – "

"Yeah, Daleks."

"And for some reason, a robot dog."

"That's K9. You had it with you when we met you."

"None of it makes connected sense. But the dreams are suffused with very strong emotions – wonder – fear…. Can I ask you something personal?"

Guessing what was coming, Rose said, "Yeah, go on."

"This Doctor, is he your lover?"

"He's not really like that. But I suppose that's what it looks like, on the outside."

"Was he mine?"

"I never asked him," Rose muttered. "But I think so, yeah. Oh. The dreams."

Sarah Jane nodded, smiling slightly. "Some, yes."

Rose felt a hot flush work up from her neck to her cheeks, and a rancid surge of jealousy. Well, this was an entirely bizarre conversation. "Before we met up, I didn't know about you," she said rapidly. "Didn't realise that he'd had girls travelling with him before. I thought I was special. But it turned out it wasn't just me, and it wasn't just you. I wondered if maybe the others could help, maybe they'd know something."

"Have you tried to get in touch with any others?"

"No. I don't know anything about them, just that there were some. This seems really stupid now, but I think I was hoping you might know. When we met before, from what you said, you did seem to know that the Doctor'd had other people with him."

"I take it you never asked him."

"No! It's not something you can really talk about with him. He puts people out of his mind if he think he'll never see them again. He has to."

"Why?"

"He lives for hundreds of years. He doesn't age, he can change his body if he's going to die. We just live a few short years as far as he's concerned. I mean, he can't hang onto everyone. He'd go mad."

"Rose… you sound bitter."

"I'm not. I'm just dead worried, and missing him."

"I'm not sure, from what you've just said, that he's worth it."

"You told me that some things are worth getting your heart broken for."

"I did? That doesn't sound like me at all."

"Well, the Doctor does that to people. He changes them."

"For the better?"

"Yeah! Look at me. My life was going nowhere at all. I was living with my mum in a council flat, I was working in a shop, I had a boyfriend who was nice but looking back, so unexciting. I never got any qualifications, left school with two GCSEs. What future did I have?"

"All your future. You were nineteen! You could have done anything with your life."

"Easy for you to say, sitting here with all this."

"But nobody came along and gave me all this, Rose. My parents were teachers, they still live in a very ordinary semi in South Croydon. I've worked hard all my life and taken chances."

"Well, you're famous, aren't you."

"That didn't happen overnight. I had some lucky breaks, yes, but I had to create the opportunities myself. The house isn't just down to me, anyway, Derek – my husband – a lot of what's gone into it is his hard work too."

"Yeah, sorry."

"All I'm trying to say is – and look, I don't want to some patronising, but I'm probably older than your mother – you're very young. You can make your own life."

A terrible feeling of desolation swept over Rose. She looked around at the kitchen, all flagstones and maple, marble and chrome, spotlights and infused oils in dark, sleek bottles. And she looked at Sarah Jane, so beautiful and poised, so full of confidence, sympathy and charm. Was this actually where she would have been without the Doctor?

Like Clive Finch would be still alive and hosting nutty web sites, and Elton Pope would be playing in amateur bands with his unpetrified girlfriends. The only thing she seemed to have done with her Doctor-free life was dump Mickey, which didn't seem like that great an idea anyway.

"Don't look so downhearted," said Sarah. "I understand, I do. The flashes I've had of the Doctor in my dreams have been very intense, very compelling. But I thought he was just someone I'd imagined. Real men like that can be dangerous. I have met one or two, and they wreck lives. You're about the same age as my elder daughter, and if she was getting into a relationship like that, I'd try to warn her against it. She wouldn't listen, but I'd try." She smiled.

"It's not a question of whether I listen, though, is it. He's gone anyway."

"Do you think – is this possible – " Sarah tilted her head back, considering. "Could he have caused this to happen, in some way? Deliberately, I mean?"

Rose shook her head violently. "No."

"But what if he'd thought about it, and decided that perhaps you were better off without him. Maybe… I wonder… is it at all possible that I had my memory erased, but imperfectly, so that the memories have come through as dreams ever since? Maybe I did really travel with him, all those years ago. And he took you back home and wiped your memory, too, and your family's, but for some reason, with you, it didn't work at all."

"No!"

"It's a suggestion," she said gently.

"No, because in my world, if it is another world, you're different."

"Different?"

"You're not married, you never had kids, you're not famous and on the telly and everything – "

"Oh!" Sarah Jane's eyes widened. "What am I doing with myself then, in this other version of events?"

Rose bit the inside of her mouth. She hadn't actually meant to tell Sarah Jane any of this, but she'd been goaded into it. Anyway, if she was going to get any help, she had to describe the whole situation. "You're still a journalist, but you write for newspapers and things, and I'd never heard of you like everyone has here. And all I know is, you never married and you don't have kids."

"Tell me I didn't spend my life pining away for the Doctor."

"Uh. I think you did actually."

Sarah was silent for a while, and a hard faraway look came onto her face, and she tapped on the wooden table rapidly with her teaspoon. "For years I've thought about the dreams," she said eventually. "Longed for the fantastic worlds I kept glimpsing, longed for the man, longed to experience for real the kind of love I felt for him while the dream lasted. But it's not real, you know. It can't be real. It can't make for a happy life."

"I am happy! Or I was, til this happened."

"I'm glad," said Sarah, "that none of this really happened to me."

"But what am I going to do? I need to get back."

"Maybe you should leave things as they are, and get on with your life."

"I _can't_."

"All right, but I don't know what to suggest! The dreams are all I have."

"I had a dream too," said Rose suddenly. "This morning, before I woke up to all this. I dreamt the Doctor was calling my name, over and over, in my head – as if he was far away and he couldn't get to me, but he was trying to reach me."

"Maybe that has some significance. Did it feel lucid – very intense?"

"Yeah, very."

"What if you go to sleep again, and see what happens. Maybe you'll learn something about what's going on if you have another dream. Maybe the Doctor is trying to reach you!"

"You haven't had any different dreams like in the last couple of days?"

"No. But about a week ago I had a very peculiar one. The Doctor was standing in front of me, but he looked different. Completely different, I mean – another man. But in the dream, I knew it was the Doctor all the same, and I seemed to remember a time when he'd been different before. Does that make any sense?"

"Yeah. Loads of sense, you don't have to tell me."

"He was young, dark haired, had a slender face, pretty-boy looks – but with burning eyes. He took my hands, and pressed them, and I had a poignant sense of loss and sorrow. I woke up with tears in my eyes." She shook her head. "Maybe he's trying to contact me, too."

"Yeah, maybe," said Rose, ashamed to feel another twist of jealousy in her gut.

"Look, maybe this is an insane idea, but it's all I can think to suggest. Why don't you spend the night here, and perhaps we'll both have dreams that could tell us something."

"You're not worried I might nick your candlesticks, or something?"

"I'm a good judge of character. I have to be. And I work on intuition, and something is telling me that we ought to stick together."

Rose had some difficulty persuading her mum not to create merry hell when she phoned to say that she was spending the night with a friend.

"What about the baby? What if something's wrong?"

"Mum, there's nothing we can do about it until the appointment next week. What do you want me to do anyway, stay at home every night for the next six months?"

"It'd keep you out of trouble!"

Sarah Jane showed her into a room with vast high ceilings, pale embossed wallpaper, oak floorboards overlaid with antique rugs, and a bed spread with cream and chocolate, silk and faux fur. Through the window, which was taller than a man, Rose could see across the trees into the enclosed private garden of the square below.

"Bathroom's through here." Sarah opened an interior door to a glimpse of chrome and glass and deep azure tiles. "It was a dressing room, we did a lot of work on the house when we bought it – it was in a terrible state, been lived in by an old theatrical dame for fifty years. Which meant that the features were all there – " She tapped the marble fireplace - "but there was one bathroom for the whole house, in the basement!"

"It's lovely," said Rose, distracted.

"Well," said Sarah Jane, pausing awkwardly at the door. "Sleep well. Let me know if anything happens. If there's a problem, we're just upstairs."

"Thanks."

She tested the bed, which looked like something from an interiors magazine that really not ought to be disturbed. The pillow smelled of perfume, not fabric conditioner. Sarah Jane had leant her a nightdress, which turned out to be tight around her hips. She wasn't exactly the same shape.

So, all she had to do was sleep and dream. She was never going to manage that.

She realised that it felt more like home that home, to be somewhere odd. With the Doctor, you just never knew where you might end up sleeping next. This wasn't the most luxurious place she had ever lain her head, that would have to have been the Palace of a Thousand Stars on Querota where the Emperor had received the Doctor and her as honoured guests. True, they'd tried to marry the Doctor the next morning to the Crown Princess and they'd had to make a pretty smart getaway, but while the going was good they'd enjoyed the silk-draped bed, mounted on a plinth and surrounded by an ornamental moat. Oh yes.

She curled round a pillow, hugging it for comfort, breathing scent. She could never sleep.

She shot upright, filled with terrible and instant panic.

There was a shape in the dark, moving black against black.

"Shit," said a man's voice, a stranger's but faintly familiar. Then, "Don't scream. Don't make a sound. Don't move – "

She scrabbled to find a bedside light, and a hand clamped over her wrist hard enough to hurt.

She smelled a wave of spicy aftershave, and felt a cold spot on her neck, and then nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

Rose struggled to open her eyes, which felt like they were glued shut. Her head was thick with nausea. Her first conscious thought was that she was hideously hungover, but memory seeped back and she blinked furiously, tears gumming up her eyes and streaming as she managed to squint into a painful light. It was the hangover from hell, combined with an eye infection.

She cramped over and threw up.

"Eww," said a man's voice, a dismayed noise.

She was on a bed, of sorts, except that it was more like a dentist's chair, and she had just chucked up on the floor beside it. There was a shimmering kind of sound, and a whining, buzzing cylindrical thing glided up to the mess and began to suck it up with an extruded tool.

The sight made Rose feel worse. She rolled back onto the chair and found she could see properly now, though through a gunge of tears that kept making everything blur.

She was somewhere bright, white, gleaming, like a kid's idea of a spaceship interior. Moulded walls and surfaces, even light with no apparent source, and over in the corner of the room – sitting on the floor, like she'd been there a while and had tried to make herself comfortable – Sarah Jane.

And standing in front of them both, watching them, was a shortish, stocky man in his sixties who looked maddeningly familiar. His close-cut dark hair was streaked with silver, and he was dressed conventionally – in bizarre contrast to the tin-foil, flashing-light surroundings – in what looked like an expensive, though oddly-styled suit.

"Sorry," said the man, unapologetically.

She _knew_ him from somewhere, and really well. It was infuriating.

"That's a side effect of the matter transference process. You should feel better in a few minutes. Fortunately, I've got my automatic servitors to clean up."

"Rose, are you all right?" asked Sarah, from her position on the floor. She was in a pair of silk pyjamas.

Rose stared at her stupidly, and turned back to the man.

"Where the hell are we? Who are you?"

"You don't remember me, Rose? And I thought your memory had been unaffected. Have I changed so much in forty-five years? I'm disappointed, I thought I'd kept in shape." He gave her a sly smile.

And suddenly, Rose recognised him. "Oh my God. Adam! Adam Mitchell!"

His smile broadened.

She clicked her fingers.

He tutted and shook his head. "Rose, Rose. That won't work any more. You don't think I wouldn't have acquired the expertise to fix that little problem in all the years since we last met?"

"You know this bastard?" said Sarah.

Rose slithered off the dentist's chair – the cleaning robot thing had already scarpered – and wobbled towards Adam.

"There's no point," said Sarah Jane. "There's an invisible barrier in the air, we're both trapped behind it."

"He travelled with us in the TARDIS for like ten minutes," said Rose, not really surprised to feel the thick, unyielding air beneath her fingers. "The Doctor chucked him out for being a wanker."

"Doesn't seem to have changed much, then."

"Ladies!" said Adam, holding up a hand. Rose noticed that his nails looked like they had been professionally manicured. "I don't want to harm you. In fact, I'm trying to help you – "

"Then take us back home!" cried Sarah. "If you think we won't be missed, you're out of your mind. My husband will report my disappearance as soon as he wakes up and realises I'm gone!"

"Yeah, and so will my mum," said Rose, but with less conviction. Somehow, she felt that they ahd been taken somewhere far beyond the reach of the authorities.

Adam smiled. "I'm afraid, my dears, that it will do no good. We're about as safe from interference here as we could possibly be."

"Are we still on Earth?" asked Rose.

"In actuality, we're nowhere." Adam smirked. He was obviously enjoying the situation. "This ship." He raised his hand. "It's not unlike the TARDIS in the way it operates. The basic technology is on a par with what the Time Lords created. It exists nowhere. In a void. Which is why I said that we're as safe here as we can be. Nothing, literally nothing can affect us here."

"How did you get hold of a TARDIS?" said Rose. "The Doctor said that his was the last in the universe."

"The Doctor doesn't know everything, Rose. And besides, this isn't a TARDIS. It uses technology the operates on the same principle and it enables me to travel in time to a certain extend, but it doesn't travel in space. And it's nowhere near as large. This control room, and some basic accommodation quarters are all there is to it. But what it does, is allow me to stand on the edge of everything. The universe could unravel into nothingness, and I'd be safe in here. Nothing can get in, unless I choose to bring it. Nothing can get out, unless I let it."

"You might as well let us out of these cages then," said Rose, her gaze scanning the instrumentation panels. The controls didn't look anything like she recognised from the TARDIS, so she believed what Adam had implied, that this ship was made by a different people. Everything was light and hard-edged, there was nothing of the semi-organic softness of the Time Lords' technology.

"Oh no," said Adam, with a soft chuckle.

He was even acting like a cut-rate Bond villain. What a plonker.

"What are you going to do with us?" asked Sarah Jane. She looked calm, Rose thought, like someone who was used to handling tense situations.

"Why, nothing. As I said, I haven't brought you here to harm you. I removed you from the time stream in order to stop it unravelling, while I worked out how to fix the problem. Once it's been repaired, I'll return you both and you can get on with your lives. You won't even remember you were here."

"It was you!" cried Sarah Jane.

Rose bit the inside of her cheeks. The same insight had occurred to her at the same moment, but she kept silent.

"You did something to my memories, you wiped out a chunk of my past! I don't know how you did it, but I did know the Doctor, I did travel with him, and you've taken that away from me!"

Adam looked smug. "Only in a manner of speaking, my dear. I've done nothing to you personally. Your memories of your life are, in fact, quite accurate. What I've altered, is that life itself."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Doctor no longer exists."

"You killed him, you bastard!" Rose screamed, flinging herself at the solid air.

She was only vaguely aware of the thump, like hitting the soft wall of a padded cell.

"No," said Adam, still smiling.

Rose sank to her knees.

"Please – don't start that again – " He winced and turned away.

Her body had taken over, and was trying to retch. There was nothing left to come up. She convulsed, and tasted bile at the back of her throat.

"Rose," said Sarah, compassionately. She knelt beside the invisible barrier that separated them and pressed her hand against it.

"No," said Adam again. "I knew better than to do that. The idea of going back to a point in the Doctor's long, inglorious history and simply putting a positron beam through his brain appealed, but there are two problems with the crude approach. For one, he would probably just regenerate, defeating the object of the exercise. There must be a way to kill a Time Lord permanently, but it's not something I've managed to find referenced anywhere, not for certain." He sounded regretful that this piece of academic information had eluded his researches. "In any case, the Doctor is notoriously resourceful, and he might find a way to stop me. But the second, more serious objection is that altering the timeline with a sledge hammer, as you might say – that's very dangerous. Bad things happen to all and sundry, if you kill someone who was meant to live, or save someone who was meant to die. Believe me, ladies, I don't want to destroy the world." He smiled tightly.

Rose glanced at Sarah, and their eyes locked. Her expression was tense, but still composed.

"When the Daleks and the Time Lords destroyed each other in the Time War, do you know what happened?"

"The Time Lords were killed."

Adam clicked his tongue. "No, the Time Lords were _removed_. They were extracted from the timeline altogether. There are no Time Lords any more and there never were any. They no longer exist and they do longer _ever did_ exist."

"Except the Doctor."

"Except the Doctor, no longer." His tone was filled with a smug exultation. "That's what I've done, Rose. I've used the same technology to remove him altogether. There never was a Doctor. He's joined his people, at last."

"Why… Adam, why?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Rose." Adam's suave master-villain persona slipped, and suddenly she glimpsed the geeky, amiable boy she had liked enough to wheedle on board the TARDIS despite the Doctor's reluctance. "You always thought the sun and moon shone out his arse. Look at what he did to me!" Adam stabbed a finger at his forehead.

Rose saw that Sarah Jane winced and wrinkled her nose as, grotesquely, a metallic hole spiralled opened in the centre of his forehead.

"Adam," said Rose, "you did that to yourself."

"But the Doctor didn't help me, did he. He dumped me back on Earth in the year 2012, where this made me a freak. You saw the way your friend reacted just now. Imagine what it was like to be trapped in a time and place where everybody – friends, family, potential employers, potential girlfriends – recoiled from you in fear and disgust."

"What, did everyone go around snapping their fingers at you,t hen?"

"_Anything _set it off!" Adam roared, suddenly furious.

Rose shifted back a little along the floor. Maybe the cheesy-villain act wasn't so much of a pose. It was just possible that he was a bit on the unstable side.

What was she thinking? He had abducted them from their beds and locked them in a cell on an alien spaceship. He was barking mad.

"TV remotes, car ignitions, mobile phones, automatic doors – I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without my forehead opening up and people running, screaming. I went for a job interview and five minutes in the CEO took a call on his mobile and click, the room cleared. I had to break off contact with my parents because they wanted me to see a specialist. I went into hiding in the end because I was being pursued by agents of an organisation called Torchwood. I spent years destitute, homeless, cut off from family, friends, hope – any kind of future. All thanks to the Doctor!"

"I'm sorry…"

"What did I do to deserve it? Tell me that! I got the neural connector put in by accident. He could've taken me somewhere to get it removed. Nothing would have been easier for him, would it? And he'd've done it if I'd been some teenage bint he was shagging. But no, my face didn't fit so he just abandoned me to a life of horror."

"You did try to nick that data, too."

"So what? Who is the Doctor to act as judge and jury? Do you honestly think, Rose, that the Doctor himself hasn't committed acts far more heinous than a bit of technology theft?"

"You know," said Sarah, "your life doesn't appear to be one of horror now, particularly. That suit looks like it cost a bit, for a start."

Adam broke his interlocked gaze with Rose and turned his attention to Sarah. "Ah, but my present situation is the result of a lifetime of struggle, a lifetime of intense focus. Eventually, let's just say, I found a way to work, not exactly _with_ those nice people at Torchwood, but alongside. I contracted extra-terrestrials, I did some deals, I acquired material wealth and technologies. My whole purpose, once I learned it might be possible, was to find a way of undoing what had happened. Look at me. I'm sixty-four, I've never married, never had a family, never had anything approaching a normal life. My parents died before I could speak to them again. Yes, I have material wealth and yes, I have a time ship, but this is not what I want. This is a means to an end. What I want is to go back to before I met the Doctor, and never have met him. I want the life I should have had."

"That's insane," said Sarah Jane.

"Is it? How about you?"

"How about me."

"Since I eliminated the Doctor, things have started to settle into shape. I've been into the new reality a few times and done some research. I wanted to find out how the lives of others who'd been in contact with the Doctor would turn out without him. You seem to be doing particularly well for yourself, Miss Smith."

"I work hard. I've always worked hard."

"Oh, indeed. But your life hasn't been blighted by exposure to extraordinary experiences no 20th century human should ever have had, nor – forgive me – by a heart broken by an irresponsible and impossible man."

Rose caught Sarah's eye. She looked puzzled and angry.

Adam turned a control on the console, and one of the viewscreens fizzed into brightness. "One of the particularly impressive technologies installed in this ship is a cross-timeline scanner. This scanner is locked onto the old timeline, the reality before I removed the Doctor. Hold still, Miss Smith."

Sarah gave a little yelp as an instrument extruded from the ceiling and hovered its tendrils near her forehead.

"Just getting a bio-print… wait a moment for the scanner to focus… Here we are." The static on the screen resolved into an image. Sarah Jane was sitting at a computer in a dim light, tapping away at the keyboard. Her hair was slightly different and she looked tired. Behind her, Rose could see the edge of a floral curtain. "That's you, as you would be right now, in the old timeline. Probably working late into the night to meet a deadline."

"I do that often enough. What's wrong with that? It looks like an improvement on my situation right now, anyway!"

"Is that your home?"

"It… looks like my parents' house in South Croydon. What am I doing there?"

"Maybe your parents are dead, and you inherited the house."

"My parents are still alive," said Sarah Jane, in a quieter voice.

Adam shrugged. "Your mother had cancer a few years ago, and you were able to pay for her to see a specialist immediately. Who knows whether it would have been too late, if she'd had to go on an NHS waiting list? Who knows how your father would have coped without her?"

"You bastard," said Sarah.

"Me? No! I'm the one who removed the baleful influence that put you in that situation – poor sad Sarah Jane, all alone in a semi in South Croydon – and enabled you to become what you always should have been – rich, famous, a crusading reporter, a wife and a mother. You should thank me!"

Sarah Jane was silent, and Rose saw tears gleaming in her eyes.

"As for you," said Adam, turning again to Rose, "you're just a kid. You didn't deserve to have your life screwed over by a philandering intergalactic hobo, either. You think you're in love with him, but you were being exploited. I'm doing you a favour, too. If you were going to be able to remember it, you'd thank me eventually."

"Piss off, Adam."

"What went wrong?" asked Sarah Jane. There was a slight tremor in her voice, she still looked calm. "I'm assuming that neither of us should have remembered anything about the Doctor, once you – eliminated him. But Rose remembers everything, and I remember dreams."

"Ah. Now we come to the crux of the matter." Adam began to pace. "Well observed, Miss Smith. This is why you're such an ace reporter, I take it. Always cutting to the chase with the right question."

"I feel inclined to echo Rose's sentiment, but go on."

"The timeline hasn't entirely settled. My instruments here told me that. I spent quite a while trying to pinpoint the focus of the disturbance, and a few hours ago I found that it was centring around a certain house in SW3. When I scanned the property, I realised that it contained both of you, and of course I knew what your connection was. I've done a great deal of research into the Doctor's activities on Earth, you see. That's how I knew all about your parents, I'm afraid. I wasn't sure which of you was creating the problem, but I had to assume that somehow, one of you was. I was even afraid that somehow, the Doctor himself had evaded me, and was hiding there. He wasn't," he added. "I searched the property thoroughly with a portable bioscanner."

Part of Rose was still, she realised, half-expecting the Doctor to appear from a panel or something and save her. She hadn't been able to suppress a flare of hope just then. Her throat caught.

"So the question is," said Adam slowly, "why are you snagging the timeline? It can't simply be the memories. In the old reality, everyone who'd been in touch with them remembered the Time Lords. The elimination process didn't alter people's perceptions."

"Well, why did that happen now, anyway?" said Rose. "Aren't you asking the question the wrong way round? You haven't thought this through, you prat. Cos I thought about this myself, yesterday. In the real world, people remember the Time Lords. How come nobody out there, except me and her, remembers the Doctor."

"Even I don't remember him properly," Sarah Jane added.

Adam shook his head. "It's not clear."

"You don't know what you're doing!" said Rose. "You're playing with toys you don't understand, same as you always did."

"Shut your stupid, ugly mouth, you little slapper!" Adam exploded. "I'm trying to help you, don't you understand? I suppose I could just kill you both and that would probably solve the problem, but I am not a killer – unlike your precious Doctor."

"The Doctor is not a killer! He saves lives!"

"The Doctor has caused the death of millions. You stupid infatuated child, he destroyed his own people. There is virtually no limit to the evil that man has done, from genocide to the ruination of individual lives. Whether you can understand it or not, I am the good guy here."

"The Doctor saves lives. He always means to do good. And he's not a patronising git, either."

Glaring, Adam turned on his well-polished heel and left the room, by way of a door that slid silently up into its frame and back into place. Outside, Rose just managed to see a glimpse of white, curving corridor.

"It might not have been the best plan, to antagonise him," said Sarah Jane.

"It was hard not to! What a tosser."

"But we're his prisoners, and we're completely at his mercy here."

"No. No, we're not. He needs us. He's scared of us."

"You might be right," said Sarah after a moment. "I was kidnapped once, you know."

"Yeah? By someone wanting a ransom?"

"No. A political kidnapping. In Kabul. I was out there doing a documentary on a school for girls that some women were running in defiance of the authorities, and I was captured by a terrorist group who had nothing to do with that particular cause. They wanted the British government to release some prisoners – convicted bombers."

"Did they?"

"No. But I was released after six weeks. They kept me in a cellar, in someone's house. They might have let me go me anyway, of course, but I survived by trying to connect with the men, and in fact one of the men's wife. I kept them talking. They could easily have killed me, but in the end they didn't. That's what I feel we should do here. This barrier, whatever it is, seems absolutely solid, and there's nothing to manipulate."

"Nothing except him. Sarah, what if he find out how to make what he's trying to do permanent? Am I even going to know? Are we both going to go back to what our lives would've been if the Doctor had never existed, and not remember any of this?"

"Maybe," she said, and shrugged.

"But it's _not right_. You can't go around wiping people out, just cos they pissed you off. He's off his head, you can see that, can't you?"

"He does have some issues," she said dryly.

"But you don't want your old life back, do you. You said yourself when we was talking in your kitchen, that you were glad it hadn't really happened to you. Well there you are, it turns out it really did."

"How can I answer that?" Her voice rose a tone. "I have _children_. You don't know what that means."

"Yeah, well I will soon."

"Oh? Oh!"

"Oh my God," said Rose slowly. "The baby."

"Is it…?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, Rose."

"But don't you see! Adam's eliminated the Doctor from time and space, stopped him from ever existing – but he hasn't, cos I'm still pregnant, the baby's still here!"

"But – are you sure, that perhaps, in this new reality – perhaps if you'd never met the Doctor, you might have been pregnant anyway, by someone else?"

"No! No, I thought of that earlier, and I had a scan. Just before I came to see you, I had a scan done. It's got two hearts! It _is_ the Doctor's."

"But if the Doctor never existed, how is that possible?"

"Because I haven't really gone into that timeline! That's why I remember everything. Somehow, the baby's protecting me, keeping me anchored – like a lifeline."

She clasped her hands together in triumph and excitement, but at Sarah Jane's dismayed expression, she turned around.

Adam had come back in, unnoticed.

"Oldest trick in the book," he said. "Leave your prisoners alone and out spills the confidential information. Did you really think I wouldn't have this room under surveillance? So much less stressful than torture."

"What book's that then?" Rose backed away, pointlessly, suddenly feeling extremely threatened in a way she hadn't before. "Evil Overlording for Idiots?"

"Extraordinary thing. Of every variable I calculated, every scenario I envisaged, it never occurred to me that the Doctor would simply be careless in bed. Or indeed, that the consequences would have such an interesting effect. I wish I could research it further, but time is running out. Sorry about this, Rose."

"Get away from her!" Sarah Jane screamed.

Rose was holding herself perfectly still, waiting for the exact moment that she knew must come. To approach her, with whatever weapon he was holding in his hand and pointing towards her, he would have to drop the barrier. As soon as she saw his other hand move towards a switch, she broke into a dive.


	6. Chapter 6

Her elbow thudded against the hard floor. Ignoring the pain, she went into a roll and felt a numbing sensation as something seared against her thigh.

She had no chance of tackling Adam himself. Her unarmed combat skills were non-existent and he looked fit and solid and had no doubt livened up his blighted existence by getting a black belt in karate somewhere along the way. Her idea was to make for the control panel, and hit a button or knob in the wall in the wild hope that it would do something to help their situation. Turn out the lights, throw the ship into reverse, teleport her back to Earth, whatever.

She managed to scramble to the panel and slapped the biggest, most obvious red button she could see before Adam took aim and fired again. A bolt of icy blue light, an all enveloping numbess, and sparks of darkness.

She didn't want to lose consciousness again. Prone on her back, she stared up at Adam, whose face was a picture of manic triumph. She tried to speak, but she had no power to move her tongue. As her senses faded, she heard Sarah scream.

"Can you move?"

It was like some corny sound effect from an old-fashioned TV drama. The voice, Sarah Jane's, was reverberating.

"Can you stand?"

Rose opened her eyes to a cold vastness. Disorientation made her senses spin. There was a spatter of wetness against her face, and natural light against her aching eyes, and an eerie windy quietness.

"Up you come. Come _on_, Rose. I'll carry you if need be."

She struggled up onto her elbows, and winced as she realised that her right arm was throbbing.

"Are you injured?"

Sarah's voice was hard, barely patient, nearly panicked.

Rose blinked and shook her head a few times, trying to clear her vision. She wasn't in Adam's time ship any more, but somewhere outside under a grey, drizzling sky. She was lying on concrete, cracked, dirty concrete, with weeds and grass growing through it.

There was nothing all around, except the overgrown stubs of shattered buildings.

"Where are we?" she gasped. "Where has he dumped us?"

"Rose, come on. This is too dangerous."

Rose looked up at Sarah Jane, who seemed to have acquired new clothes. In place of the elegant grey silk pyjamas she had been wearing on Adam's ship, she was in dark-coloured, filthy and very worn-looking combat gear. Her hair was cropped much shorter and was more grey than dark, kept out of her eyes by a band around her forehead, and to Rose's astonishment, her face was lined and weathered.

What the hell was going on? Had she been put forward in time, relative to Sarah Jane? Except that she was still slender and lithe, Sarah Jane suddenly looked _old_.

"Patrol" Sarah hissed in an urgent whisper, and Rose found herself yanked to her spaghetti-like legs and half-dragged across the open area towards one of the ruined buildings.

She glanced back, and what she saw almost made her legs buckle under her for real.

In the medium distance, behind one of the half-demolished walls, glided the unmistakable rounded pepper-pot head of a Dalek.

Sarah flattered her to the ground inside the building and pushed her head to the floor. She coughed and inhaled rubble dust.

"Right," whispered Sarah, "it should be at the far end now."

She was obvious supposed to move at this point. She followed Sarah deeper into the derelict shell of the building. In one corner, Sarah Jane moved a piece of corrugated iron aside to reveal an intact concrete staircase going down. She positioned the sheet of iron back in place behind them, and for a moment they were in complete darkness. Then Sarah took a torch from her pocket and the dingy light illuminated the stairwell, which led into what looked to Rose very much like one of the cellars in the Powell Estate tower blocks. She and Shireen had used to meet up with some other girls, who fancied themselves hard, when they were thirteen and fourteen and tried smoking stolen fags down here – or somewhere very much like here.

Another door at the back of the cellar led to the boiler room, she recalled, and sure enough Sarah led her through there – past silent, rusting machinery – to a trap door in the corner.

"This is the Powell Estate!" cried Rose, forgetting herself. "This must be the future. Oh my God. What a mess."

"Keep quiet."

Sarah lifted the trapdoor. Below, there was a light, and she immediately switched off her torch. She swung nimbly down a metal ladder, and Rose followed more clumsily, feeling awkward in her nearly-undressed state. At the bottom, they were in what looked like a heating maintenance tunnel.

People were living down here. There were arrangements of blankets along the walls, little heaps of books, lamps and other personal effects. Even photographs pasted up, showing people dressed in ordinary 21st century style, bright and somehow pathetic in their ordinariness. It smelled musty, of stale unwashed bodies. Without a glance at anything around, Sarah Jane stalked along the tunnel until they reached a low door in the curved wall.

Beyond was a larger room, lit with torches and filled with old bits of broken furniture put to approximate use. There were three or four others in here, at work. As Sarah Jane and Rose came in, they stopped what they were doing and stared at them.

"All right," said Sarah Jane, closing the door and speaking out loud at last. "What the hell's the story, Rose?"

"I don't – I don't know – "

"What are you wearing? Where did you get that thing?"

Rose looked down at herself. She was still wearing nothing but Sarah Jane's own lacy, silky nightdress, a little tight around the hips. "You… gave it to me."

One of the strangers in the room, a middle-aged man with a gaunt face, snorted.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sarah snapped. "Did you get any food?"

"Uh… look… something really strange has happened here."

"And what have you done to your hair? Why is it so different? How could you have got it so different in six hours? It's got – colour in it!"

"Sarah – don't you remember anything? About Adam, or the Doctor, or the TARDIS?"

"She must have been hit on the head," said another stranger, a younger woman of about Rose's own age.

"You said you could cope," said Sarah, glaring at her. "I was an idiot to trust you. Now you seem to have managed to lose your clothes, too."

"Whatever is that you're wearing?" asked the young woman, coming closer.

"It's a nightdress," said Sarah. "A special garment women wore to bed, in the old days."

"A dress just for sleeping in? Wow. That must be why it's so flimsy." She reached out as if she wanted to touch it, but hesitated. "Did you used to have one?"

"I honestly don't remember," said Sarah brusquely. "Rose, I'm serious. Tell me where you got it."

Rose gaped at her helplessly, her mind somersaulting over the obvious and catastrophic explanations for what was going on. Clearly, this was Earth as it would have been right now, if the Daleks had won with Time War. They would have taken over every civilised planet they could, and exploited them to their own ends. Somehow, Adam's meddling had now had far more serious consequences than he could have foreseen or desired.

"I found it," she stammered.

"Where?"

God, this new Sarah Jane was hard. "Uh, in a house, an abandoned house."

Sarah Jane's eyes narrowed. "And that's all there was there? A nightdress, in perfect condition – and nothing useful?"

Rose was hopeless at lying. She was trying to think of something to say that might back away from this story, when the door to the room opened and Adam came in.

But not the Adam who had held them captive on the time ship. This was the Adam she remembered from before, except even younger than he had been then. Fresh-faced, evidently barely older than she was. He too was dressed in filthy near-rags.

Rose scarcely had a moment to react before she found herself caught in an embrace.

She squealed and fought, but he was actually trying to kiss her.

"I heard you were back safe," he said, his face open and joyful and a little puzzled. "Thank God. Rose, what's wrong?"

"Oh no," she said. "No, no, no." She stumbled back, wiping at her mouth.

"Rose!" He was actually coming for her again, arms outstretched to touch her.

"Leave her, Adam, she's having a funny turn," said the girl.

"Cut it out," snapped Sarah Jane.

Adam dropped his arms and, with an anxious glance at Sarah, stepped back.

"All right," she said. "Rose, I don't know what happened out there but you need to go and find some proper clothes and go and help Vinny in the stores. We can talk later when you've calmed down. Adam, I want to see where you've got to on the detector."

To Rose's relief, Sarah Jane took Adam out of the room. She was left with the girl, Vinny, who arched her eyebrows and said, "Want to borrow my other jeans and top?"

"I suppose."

"Well, Mum's right, you can't go around in that."

So this was Sarah Jane's other daughter – Lavinia, had she called her? That had been back in the world of marble-topped kitchens and cappuccino makers. Dumbly, Rose followed her further along the main tunnel to a side passage, which ended in a blind wall and a ladder. Here, on the floor, were two blanket beds and small hoards of possessions stored in battered plastic crates.

Vinny pulled out a pair of trousers and a top, both stained and torn.

"The jumper's more holes than jumper," she said. "Sorry. What did happen to your clothes?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Did you get attacked? Not by the Daleks, I mean – by some other people?"

"I said, I don't want to talk about it."

"Hey, OK!"

"Am I really – " The expression 'going out with' seemed absurd in the circumstances, so she started again. "Am I really with Adam?" And actually, given the fact that she now seemed to be stranded on an Earth overrun by Daleks and living in squalor in a maintenance tunnel underneath the Powell Estate, it ought to be the least of her concerns. Except, it wasn't.

"Well, if you don't want him any more, can I have him?"

"Honestly, you're welcome to him."

"Only joking, of course." She smiled and looked down in a way that made it quite clear that she wasn't joking at all. "What's gone wrong?"

"Uh… " For a start, Daleks have taken over the world. "You know."

"I always thought you two were really good together. You don't want to pay any attention to what my mum says."

"Well…"

"I know she disapproves of any of us having relationships, specially because of the danger of babies, but I mean, what are we supposed to do? She can't forbid human nature. And it's all very well to say that we can all get married and start having children after we've overthrown the Daleks, but – well – to be honest, if we adopt that policy we're more likely just to die out, before that happens."

"Yeah."

"She never got over Dad and Matthew, I think. But it's not fair to take that out on everyone else. I mean, you got over Mickey."

Shit. Rose drew in a sharp breath, her heart and stomach twisting.

"Oh, sorry, Rose. I'm sorry."

"'S OK."

"I think… maybe… you should stick with Adam. Everyone needs someone, and he's so clever. And nice."

The clothes Vinny had given her didn't smell too good, a sort of sour, charity-shop odour. There was a gaping hole at the front of the jumper.

"Oh dear," said Vinny, as Rose waggled several fingers through it. "The trouble is, it's getting dangerous to go more than a few streets away, to look for new clothes, let alone food. They've upped the patrols in the last few weeks. Oh well, let's go and do the inventory, and keep Mum happy."

"I want to go and talk to Adam."

"Well… you heard what Mum said, she's looking at what he's doing on the detector."

"Then I can look too. Maybe I can help."

"I don't think you're in Mum's good books at the moment."

"I don't care!"

"All right. I'll do the inventory by myself then. It's not as if we've got much left in there."

Left alone in the miserable dead end corridor that now seemed to be her home, Rose sank down onto her own folded pile of blankets and tried to order her thoughts. Where was her mother? Almost certainly killed by the Daleks, along with Sarah Jane's husband and son – and Mickey. She fought tears. It wasn't going to do any good at all to sit here blubbing.

She realised she had no clear memory – actually, no memory at all of what happened after Adam had shot her with the blue-light ray gun. It must have been some sort of stun gun, because he had hit her at point blank range and waking up on the concrete outside was the next thing she had been aware of.

The timeline had been unravelling with instability, he'd said. Clearly, it had now collapsed into insanity.

This wasn't the real world. This _was not real_, she told herself fiercely. It was futile to get upset over Mickey, or her Mum, or the Powell Estate being a pile of Dalek-infested rubble, because it was nothing more than a bad dreams he was going to wake up from once she worked out how to get things back to normal.

She had to get Adam alone, and confront him. Well, it seemed that the way things were in this reality, that shouldn't be too difficult.

She wandered back along the tunnel, treading carefully, trying to look as if she knew where she was going. At the far end from the entrance she could hear voices, and she found a wooden door marked DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE, emblazoned with the motif of a human figure dying by electrical violence. It was, she suddenly thought with a shudder, not a bad sketch of someone being exterminated by a Dalek.

Beyond the door was a small cramped room which looked as if had housed an electrical generator or substation or something. Rose was no expert – anyway, there was a big coiled machine, of the sort that you weren't supposed to climb onto or go near, taking up most of the space. Behind it, Adam had set up a clutter of gadgets on a table and he and Sarah Jane were hovering over them.

"Careful!" he shouted, as Rose came in.

She realised that the floor was a tangle of wires, and she picked her way across it carefully, edging past the generator.

"What is it?" Sarah Jane snapped.

"I need to talk to you both."

Sarah folded her arms. "Something happened out there, didn't it."

"No," said Rose. "Nothing happened out there, not in the way that you think, but _listen._ Adam, Sarah – do neither of you remember?"

"Remember? What?"

Adam merely looked at her with mild enquiry.

"The Doctor? Time Lords? The TARDIS? K stupid 9?" Her voice cracked with frustration at their blank stares, and despair welled up. And a dreadful, dawning fear. "He is gone, isn't he. He really is gone this time. Oh my God, Adam, what did you do? What did you do? What did you do to the baby?"

"The baby!" said Adam, in evident amazement.

"You're not pregnant, are you?" said Sarah Jane, in equally evident horror.

"Rose!" Adam clambered round from behind his bench of electronic junk and tried to put his arms around her.

"Get away from me!" Rose screamed, lashing out at him with her fists.

Adam yelped and put his hands up to defend himself, backing against the bench with a clatter.

"Stop it!" Sarah Jane shouted. "At once! What the _hell_ is going on?"

And at the same moment, there was a scream from further away, and a pounding of footsteps.

The door flung back. Rose whirled around to see Vinny, her mouth open in fear. "Mum," she gasped. "We're under attack. It's not – "

And in a flash of blue light, she crumpled forward.


	7. Chapter 7

With a cry, Sarah Jane ran towards her daughter's body and fell to her knees, cradling her. Two humanoid figures loomed in the doorway above her.

Sarah pulled a gun and fired at the nearest of the new arrivals, who shot her down with a gun he had already drawn. Noiselessly, Sarah crumpled on top of Vinny.

"Stand back!" cried the new arrival in a commanding voice. It was a woman, a short wiry woman in her thirties, dressed in a black and silver uniform. "Time agents! Stand back – no weapons!"

Behind her, much taller, came the second agent. "Don't panic people, they're only stunned. Drop your weapons or we will fire. And you wake up with a helluva case of pins and needles, so let's keep it nice."

It was Jack.

Rose thought she had no capacity for astonishment left, but other than the Doctor himself, Jack was the one person in the universe she was happiest to see at that moment. The fear and confusion she had pushed down overwhelmed her along with relief, and ignoring the pointed guns – ignoring the impossibility of the fact that he was here in this twisted, ghastly world – she broke from Adam's grip and threw her arms around him. "Jack! Oh, Jack."

"Hey," he said, sounding puzzled.

He smelled exactly the same, an exotic spicy very clean scent, as if he'd just stepped out of the shower and doused himself with alien aftershave. The clasp of his arms was incredibly strong, like arm bands squeezing her. She'd never got so far as full-on kissing him because he was such a whore she just hadn't wanted to go there, but it was so comforting to be held and find him just the same as ever.

"Captain!" snapped the female agent. "Do we have to have this kind of thing every time?"

"Sorry, ma'am, not exactly my doing." He loosened his grasp, but didn't quite let go for a moment. "Do I know you?"

"Yeah. No. I don't know any more, I'm losing track."

"We can fix that later," he said with a smile and his old half-wink, and released her.

"Rose, what's going on, who is this man?" said Adam, clearly perturbed and angry.

"I'm Captain Jack Harkness, this is Commander Gertrude Harrow of the Intergalactic Time Agency," said Jack.

"Adam Mitchell." Pointing her weapon directly at him, Commander Harrow advanced towards Adam, who backed away with a stumble and raised his hands. "You're under arrest by the Intergalactic Time Agency for gross and premeditated disruption of the timeline."

"What?" he squeaked.

"Captain." Commander Harrow nodded to Jack.

Jack took something that looked like a band of silver plastic from a pouch on his belt, grappled Adam – who put up a slight, ineffectual resistance – and secured his hands behind his back. "You don't have to say anything now, but anything you do say will be recorded and might cease to apply once the timeline is re-adjusted."

Adam's face was pale and panicked. "But I haven't done anything! Who are you? Rose – Rose – have you turned us in? Are you working for the Daleks?"

"The Daleks shouldn't be here," said the Commander. "Earth isn't even supposed to have fully established contact with other space-going species in this time period, or at least, the contact wasn't public knowledge. You've screwed up the history of your own planet like I've never seen before."

"You're going to take us to your time ship," said Jack, giving the band on Adam's wrists another tug. "We know you have one."

"You're mad! Both of you! I want to know that Sarah and Vinny are all right! And we're not alone down here. The others will come – "

"The others are sleeping peacefully as these guys, buddy," said Jack. "They made a fuss and now they're out of the action for now."

"Jack," said Rose, "he doesn't remember anything. He's part of all this now. He did do it, but he doesn't remember that he did it."

"Uhuh. What a fucking mess."

"Captain," said Commander Harrow. "Language on duty."

"Sorry, ma'am. But what're we gonna do now, if this joker can't tell us anything?"

"We'll just have to search for the signal of his ship. It must be somewhere nearby. There's some urgency, the stability of this whole timeline is degenerating. You, ma'am, perhaps you could explain why you seem to know what's going on, and how it is you know Captain Harkness."

"No," said Rose. "I couldn't." She glanced at Jack, then addressed the Commander, who was obviously his superior officer. "All I know is, this is all wrong. He – " she stabbed a finger at Adam – "took a friend of mine from time, somehow. I don't know how he did it, he didn't kill him, he removed him, he said."

"That's not possible," said Commander Harrow.

"It caused all this to happen. This is what Earth would've been now, in this time, if my friend never existed."

"Seems to me," said Jack, "that you know entirely too much."

Commander Harrow had taken an instrument out of her belt, the size and approximate shape of a mobile phone, and was pointing it at Rose.

"Can I make sure Sarah Jane and her daughter are OK?" Rose asked, directing the question at Jack.

He shrugged. "They're fine. Just stunned, like I said."

He made no move to stop her as she knelt beside the two women.

"Don't think about going for their weapons," Jack added.

"Don't be stupid," said Rose. "I need your help, why would I fight you?" Gently, she eased Sarah's body off Vinny's and laid her in a more comfortable-looking position on the floor, then clumsily felt for a pulse in both women's necks. One day soon, if she got out of this, she vowed she was going to take a first aid course. Watching TV had taught her well enough to do this much. She could feel the ripple of a pulse under the skin after groping a bit.

"She's of this time," said Commander Harrow, "but not of this timeline. Her resonance pattern's normal. We're going to have to arrest her too."

"Fine! Arrest me too! Just take me out of this place and help me get the Doctor back!"

"Who's the Doctor?" asked Jack.

"I thought you two weren't part of this?" She looked between them.

"We're not," said the senior agent, crisply. "Our time ship keeps us safe from temporal fluctuations, or we wouldn't be able to do our job at all. When we move outside our own time, we're protected anyway by the laws of time itself. Neither of us are native to this time period. You, on the other hand, are. Even if you were removed from time when the violation occurred, you ought to have been absorbed by the new reality when you were returned to it."

"Which seems to be what's happened to the perp," said Jack.

"So why don't you remember the Doctor, or me?" Rose said, and then the answer hit her. "You haven't met us yet. You're the old Jack. Time agent Jack, from before we met you."

"Shit," said Jack.

"Oh, well done, Captain," said his colleague.

"I hate this."

"Yet it keeps happening to you, doesn't it?"

"With respect, ma'am, this is not my fault!"

"It will be. But we've more immediate things to worry about right now. Let's take them both into custody and see if we can track Mitchell's ship in the vicinity."

"You can't do this!" cried Adam. "You're all mad! The Daleks will blow your heads off as soon as you go outside!"

"We don't need to go outside," said Jack, strapping another device around Adam's neck. It looked like a thing collar. He whimpered, but nothing happened to him. "If you don't mind, ma'am…"

Anxious to prove that she trusted him, Rose lifted her own hair and stood still as he fastened another one onto her. As his fingers touched the bare skin at the back of her neck, she shivered a little. She knew he was lingering a little longer than he needed to, and she felt him give her shoulders a small but firm squeeze, and a sweet, hot breath on her cheek. "My name's Rose," she said.

"I guessed. Pretty name."

"Cut it out, Captain," said Commander Harrow.

Jack stepped back with a grin. "Prepare to transport."

"How about – "

She was cut off mid sentence, a very disorientating experience. There was a blurry, buzzing sensation, and her new surroundings flashed into place with disconcerting suddenness. She stumbled and swayed, uncertain of the solidity of the floor beneath her feet.

"Whoa," said Jack's voice in her ear, and both arms gallantly and opportunistically supporting her.

Beside her, Adam clattered forward onto the ground.

They were in another space ship, small but bright and warm and clean. The interior was circular, the embracing hull dome-shaped, and they had materialised in a central area with soft seating and a table spread with books and empty cups. Around rim of the room were curved banks of instruments.

Commander Harrow immediately made for the controls, while Jack hooked a hand under Adam's bound arm to help him to the sofa.

"Oh God," said Adam, gibbering as he collapsed sideways into the slightly squishy seat. "Where are we? Is it a Dalek ship?"

"Do we look like Daleks, punk?"

"What about Sarah Jane and the others?" asked Rose. "We can't leave them down there!"

"Here's the thing. We're trying to repair the damage this jerk caused to the timeline. If we get things back on track, the timeline will revert to normal. Everyone in that bunker will go back to the way they should be, which I'm pretty sure, isn't hiding in a tunnel from a bunch of pepper-pot shaped alien invaders. They won't remember any of this."

"They won't remember," said Rose, slowly. Well, that was good. She felt uneasy about the idea of Sarah Jane waking up to memories of a life that, by external appearances, had been far more successful than the one she had really led, and a husband and children she no longer had. Vinny, of course, would cease to exist at all. She felt a flash of remorse at that, and her head began to throb with confusion. She had pressed her fingers to the living pulse in Vinny's neck, minutes before. She was still wearing her stinky old clothes.

"You've got to find the Doctor," she said, holding out a hand to Jack.

He took it. "Your friend, huh?"

"Yours too."

"Uh-uh, I do not want to know. The more I know, the more they wipe. I'm in enough trouble." He indicated his superior officer with a small toss of the head in her direction.

"They wipe your memory?"

"Yeah, parts of it, after mind-probing you. It's not fun. But it's the rules."

"Maybe – " She had been about to say, maybe that's what happened when they took two whole years of memories from your mind. It was what had caused him to leave the Time Agency in the end, as far as she understood it. But he didn't need to be given any more now to forget.

If he was going to be able to remember it, she was tempted to say to him - don't come with us when the Doctor says you can stay on the TARDIS. Or rather, hop off and find your own way at the first opportunity, because you are going to fall for the Doctor too and end up chucked overboard and forgotten. It wasn't fair. She had been so selfish and focussed. Now that he was actually here with her again, even if it was an earlier Jack, that feeling of remorse overwhelmed her.

The Doctor had lied. Bastard.

"Jack," she said, suddenly almost in tears, and hugged him again.

"How well am I going to know you?" he asked in her ear, pulling her closer. "I shouldn't ask, but hey."

"Not that well," she said, smiling through the tears.

"Pity."

"Excuse me," said Adam. "That's my girlfriend, if you don't mind."

"Yeah? Well, you're the one in handcuffs, bud."

"I'm not your girlfriend," said Rose. "But I'm not getting into that."

"Got it!" cried Commander Harrow, from the other end of the ship.

Jack strode over to her, and Rose followed. She was aware of Adam watching sullenly from his helpless sitting position.

The Commander had activated a little holographic pantomime of planets and speck-like spark objects, including a tiny detailed spinning disk that she imagined was the ship they were on. There was a flashing dot not too far distant from them, according to the graphic.

"It's definitely a void ship," said the Commander, absorbed in a read-out of information flowing on a screen below the hologram. "Well, it had to be."

"Any idea of its origin?"

"Nope. Unknown signature. We'll take this one in for analysis if we can."

"What are you going to do with Adam?" Rose asked, and the Commander turned to her with an irritated slightly surprised look, as if she'd forgotten she was there. "I mean, when he did this, he was sixty something. You can't put him back like he is now."

"Doesn't work like that," said Jack. "He's been crossing his own timeline, that's a misdemeanour in itself, if you don't have a licence to do it. The timeline disruption happened here, now, at this point in the space/time continuum. Doesn't matter that the perp came back in time to do it."

"He wanted to remove the Doctor five years before he ever met him, just to be sure," said Rose, thinking aloud. "But it changed everything, the whole course of his life, too."

"We find the exact moment the crime was committed, we fix the fault, we arrest the future version of him who committed the crime, and we return this guy to his proper time and place, where he'll re-integrate. Trouble is, we weren't expecting the perp to be so dumbass as to get caught up in his own changed reality. Usually when people pull this stunt, staying outside the changes is exactly what they aim to do, because they want something out of it."

"Well, that's what he wanted. To lead a normal life."

"I'm listening here," said Adam. "I can hear you, you know. I can't believe you're arresting me for something I haven't done yet, something I don't think I would ever do! And you, Rose, I can't believe you're part of this. You've always fought for freedom and justice!"

"Adam… I'm sorry… it's difficult to explain."

"Don't even try," said Commander Harrow brusquely. "Approaching the unidentified ship now."

"Don't feel bad," said Jack, in a lower voice, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We'll put him back where he should be and he won't remember a thing."

"And what you're going to do, it'll get the Doctor back?"

"If taking out your friend is what caused the damage, then sure."

"Perhaps," said the Commander, her eyes still on the controls. "We can't be sure of the collateral."

"What does that mean?" Rose asked in a moment of panic. Jack's fingers dug deeper into the flesh of her shoulder.

A musical tone sounded from the control panel. "All right. We're within transport range. There doesn't seem to be any shielding. Captain, get over there and find out what you can. I'll guard the prisoners."

"Commander, I'd like to take Rose with me. Since she can recall events, she may be able to help."

"I'll be honest here. At this moment I'm more suspicious of her than I am of Mitchell, whose timeline absorption seems genuine to me. I don't understand how she's retained her original resonance."

"All the more reason for me to keep a close eye on her, ma'am."

"Very well, but an eye is all."

"Would I?"

"Yes, you would. Get over there, and I want an ongoing status update. And Captain, don't blow it up. I want that ship impounded for the Agency."

Rose closed her eyes this time as the transporter beam took hold, and oddly this made it easier to balance when they landed. Jack reached out for her anyway, and squeezed her arm until it was obvious that she was steadied.

"You get used to it," he said.

Rose stood where she had materialised while Jack darted about to search their surroundings. Adam's time ship looked exactly as it had before she'd lost consciousness on the floor.

"Hmm, this isn't human technology, no way," said Jack. "The tech boffins back at base are going to have fun with this lot. Wonder what's this way. Stick with me."

"What are you looking for?" Rose asked, as they went beyond the control room where she had been held captive, to the corridor beyond.

"Trying to get a clue about what he did and how he did it."

"I told you what he did, he removed the Doctor from time, like the Time Lords were removed when they lost the Time War. Or maybe they didn't lose, I've never understood that – anyway, they're gone. And now he's gone too."

"The Time Lords!" Jack stopped and looked at her seriously. "I thought they were just a legend."

"No. They were real. But the Doctor is the last one."

"Are you sure about that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come on Rose." He was much graver, even a little threatening. "It doesn't happen – humans who can withstand temporal disturbance. The Time Lords were supposed to have that power, it's part of the legend. I'm starting to wonder something here."

Without touching her, he had locked her physically against the wall, looming over her in a way that meant she would have to fight to get past him. She held still, and looked him in the eye. "I'm not a Time Lord, if that's what you're thinking. But I am pregnant."

"With the Time Lord's kid?"

She nodded. "I think the baby's protecting me somehow. It's maybe even protecting everything."

He broke into a wide smile, and threw back his head. "That is the craziest thing I've ever heard." He let her go. "Come on then, we'd better get its daddy back for you."

The corridor outside the control room was narrow, and curved sharply. Jack yanked open one door, which led into a tiny, neatly arranged cabin. He rummaged efficiently through Adam's few personal effects while Rose stood uneasily at the door. She was beginning to feel light-headed, a combination of shock, disorientation and lack of food – it must be several hours since she had last eaten, a delicious pasta dish at Sarah Jane's house in Chelsea. At least she was no longer feeling sick, which was something.

"Nothing of any use here," he concluded. "The guy doesn't seem to have had a life."

"No," said Rose sadly. "I don't think he did."

The next door along drew an, "Aha!" from Jack. It was a cupboard packed with what were evidently weapons. Jack removed a long, green, gun-like device which looked to Rose like something from a late-night cheesy B-movie – it even had Perspex-like rings along its barrel.

"This could be it," he said.

"What is it?"

"Wow, it looks like a portable null-device. Incredible. Usually these things are the size of a shopping mall." He tapped the communicator on his wrist. "Might've found the weapon, ma'am."

"Captain, I asked you for an ongoing status report."

"Sorry – but you're not going to believe this. It looks like a hand-held null device."

"That can't be right!"

"According to Rose, the rift was caused by Mitchell annulling a man called the Doctor."

"I find that unlikely. This amount of damage couldn't have been caused by the annulment of a single person."

"Actually, ma'am, from other information she's given me, I think it could. And he could've done it with this, if it's what I think it is."

"Well… review the ship's records to see if you can find when he entered the timestream to do this. My concern is that the timeline is so profoundly damaged in this area, we might not be able to get an accurate pinch point."

"I'll see what I can do, ma'am."

Two more cabins, which were entirely empty, and a tiny galley kitchen turned out to be the extent of the rest of the ship. They quickly found themselves back in the control room.

Rose looked around the place where she and Sarah Jane had been held prisoner while Jack pored over the instrument panels and pressed buttons.

"Do you know what you're doing?" she asked.

"No. Making guesses. I've never seen this technology before! I'm looking for the event recorder… if there is one… there's bound to be one…"

"He had a viewer thing, I can't remember what he called it, but he was able to show Sarah Jane – that's the woman he kidnapped with me, another friend of the Doctor's, the one you shot in the bunker – he was able to show her what she would've been doing now, in the old reality, before he'd changed things."

"Really! Now that would be handy. Oho, the Agency are gonna love this ship. Bonuses all round." He patted the console and grinned. "If we ever get this mess fixed."

"But couldn't you use it to see the moment when Adam did – whatever he did to the Doctor?"

"I don't see how."

"Your Commander woman was saying that the timeline was so messed up that you couldn't pinpoint it. Is that right?"

"Yeah, because usually we'd use a detector and a time viewer to spool back through time til we found the spot. There's too much noise here. We arrived at approximately the right place, approximately the right point in time, but we can't see where the damage occurred. We were relying on the perp to talk."

"Well, if you can see the old timeline by using the viewer on this ship, can you kind of - wind back?"

"It's worth a try," said Jack slowly, with a big grin.

Rose remembered why she had felt such an immediate connection with Jack when she'd first met him, and it had only incidentally been because he'd just saved her life. He really was like the Doctor, full of the same energy and delight. Like the Doctor, as she'd said, except with sex, too. Hah, well, that had been a long time ago.

It took Jack less fiddling about than she would have imagined to work out how to use the timeline viewer. From the help she could give him from what she could remember seeing Adam do, he located the bioscanner that had allowed the device to fix on Sarah Jane and extrapolate her alternative life.

"Sounds like what we really need for this is the wonder boy himself. But we'll try it out on you, Rose. Hold still, I don't want to put your eye out."

Rose held her breath, suppressing her nerves, as tendrils snaked down from the ceiling and touched her forehead. She opened her eyes, which she had closed reflexively, to find that Jack had already managed to get a picture into focus on the screen.

"Oh."

It was the untidy interior of her bedroom at home. The duvet was flung on the floor, all her drawers were pulled open and tipped out, and her teddies and soft toys were scattered everywhere.

"You're not there," said Jack. "Interesting."

"But that's my bedroom! My bedroom at home! It's still there!"

"No, it _would _be there. Nice housekeeping, by the way."

"I don't keep my room like that! It looks like we've been burgled or something."

"Hold still, I'm gonna see if I can scope backwards. Ah. Here we go."

Bizarrely, the scene in her empty bedroom started to spool backwards fast like a rewinding video. The door opened inwards and her mother – followed by the Doctor himself – reversed jerkily into the room.

"There! There!" Rose gasped. "Stop!"

The image slowed and began to run forward again, at normal speed. There was no sound, but it was obvious that the Doctor and her mother were having an almighty row. Or rather, Jackie was waving her arms around and yelling noiselessly, and the Doctor looked cold, tense, stressed. Then the Doctor began to pull the room apart, as if frantically searching for something or anything.

"That him?" asked Jack. "Cute guy."

Whatever he was doing, Rose didn't care. She gazed at the image of the Doctor ripping her cabinet drawers out and flinging her old teddies across the room with desperate relief and desperate longing. "He's there. He's OK."

"Rose, listen to me. He's _not_ there. This is a phantom timeline. We have instruments that can detect outlines and resonances and this new technology here is superb, it's giving images – but that's all we're seeing. An image, an illusion."

"What – what can we do, then?"

"First of all, let's see if we can go back to the crisis point."

He set the image running backwards again. Her mother and the Doctor left the bedroom, now neatened, and they watched the empty bed for a while.

"I guess this is showing where you would've been," Jack muttered. "Faster, faster. This is the most boring bedroom scene I've come across in a while."

Despite herself, Rose snorted out a giggle.

The scene shifted to outside the flats at night, to the walkway where she had walked with the Doctor to tell him the news. And there they were, striding backwards.

"Stop!" cried Rose.

Jack had already hit pause and play, or the high-tech trans-timeline equivalent. She watched herself and the Doctor pacing along the concourse, looking painfully like an unhappy couple. The Doctor was hunched in on himself in that way he had, making himself a personal exclusion zone with his elbows and his shoulders and his hands thrust in pockets. She was walking a little too far away from him, her head bowed and her arms folded.

"Had a row, huh?" said Jack.

"No! Just a discussion."

They stopped, together, and looked awkward for a moment. The Doctor clasped her hands, leaned down towards her face, spoke with intensity. Rose saw herself smile and shake her head, and the Doctor planted a kiss on her forehead. She remembered how she had still felt uneasy and angry with him, and she hadn't invited him to kiss her properly. He never pushed that sort of thing.

The Doctor strode away – to the TARDIS to spend the night, of course – and the image tracked her as she wandered unhappily in the other direction, towards the staircase up to her mum's flat.

Jack shook his head. "Big row."

"No! Shut up, Jack. You don't understand."

"So you separated at that point?"

"Yeah. I went home, the Doctor went back to the TARDIS."

Jack made a frustrated noise. "We can't follow him now, this thing is locked on you."

The image of Rose climbed the outer staircase, looked over the balcony to where the TARDIS was – brooding, frowning – and turned into the flat.

"He didn't take the news about the kid too well?"

Rose folded her arms. "It's none of your business."

On the screen, she passed through the flat's tiny hallway, snapped at her mother, went into her bedroom and pulled a pillow over her head.

"Aww," said Jack. "That guy needs some lessons in how to treat women right."

Rose bit back what she might have said.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't need to see you," said Jack, after another few moments. "I need to see him." He reached to fiddle with the controls, but stopped as Rose began to take off her clothes. "Hello."

"Oh, for God's sake, Jack."

"No, this is turning out to be a good home movie after all."

"Oi, look away."

"Think I've never seen a woman undressing before?"

"Well, you've never seen _me_ undressing."

"I have now!"

To Rose's utter mortification, she was in the process of climbing into her old blue teddy bear print pyjamas, naked. And Jack was watching with a frank grin lighting up his stupidly handsome face.

She flicked out of existence.

"Whoa," said Jack, and rewound the moment. His expression was abruptly serious.

Once again, Rose saw herself pull the pyjama top over her head, and step one leg at a time into the bottoms. As she was drawing them up to her waist, she ceased to be there at all.

"I don't remember that happening," said Rose in amazement.

"You don't remember putting on your pjs?"

"Yeah, I do – kind of – then I just got into bed and went straight to sleep, I think. When I woke up in the morning, that was when things were different."

"It looks as if things were different right there, only you didn't realise it. That's the moment. You crossed into the new reality. So Mitchell annulling your boyfriend – must've happened right there, right then."

"He probably never got as far as the TARDIS."

"What's the TARDIS, his ship?"

She nodded.

"If it's a void ship, like this one and ours, that's likely. It would have been hard for anything to get at him there." He punched his communicator. "Commander, I think we've got a pinpoint on the exact moment. I'll explain later how – you've gotta see this stuff."

"Good work, Captain. We need to hurry, stability is down to twenty-three percent."

"We should bring Mitchell over here and hook him up to the machine, it'll let us see for sure."

"Get back here with the temporal co-ordinates in the first instance, and I'll make a decision on that."

"Understood, ma'am." He turned to Rose. "Ready?"

"Just a moment." Something had caught Rose's eye. On the floor, half concealed behind a protruding panel, was a small black device that was obviously shaped to fit around a humanoid hand. She recognised it as she picked it up.

"Hey, careful!" said Jack, immediately taking it from her. He dangled it from one finger. "Nasty. You don't want that to go off accidentally."

"Is it a gun?"

"It's a cellular disruptor. Yeah, it's a gun, and it's not one of the better ways to die."

"I was shot with it."

"You were _what_?"

"Adam. He shot me with it. At point blank range. It made a kind of blue light, and I felt numb – but it didn't hurt. It knocked me out though. I think it's the same one, he must've dropped it."

Jack looked at the hilt of the gun and said, "OK."

"OK?"

"It's on its lowest setting. You were lucky, three or higher and your internal organs would be soup." He pressed a switch on the gun and slipped it into his all-encompassing belt, then activated his communicator and spoke with a new tone of urgency. "Commander, forget what I said just now – we need to get straight in there and make the pinch. I think we could be running out of time."

"You're telling me! Stability's fallen to seventeen percent! You've got an estimate on the co-ordinates?"

"A pretty accurate one, I reckon."

"I'll trust your judgement on this one, Captain. Transmit them to me and get down there now."

"What's happening?" Rose asked, suddenly scared by the change in his demeanour.

"Change of plan," said Jack, without meeting her eye. "Hold on tight – let's go and find your Time Lord."


	8. Chapter 8

One moment she was warm and dry, the next, there was wind and wetness against her face. The abrupt motionless environment transitions of transporting would take a lot of getting used to.

She opened her eyes to pressing, numbing darkness, the kind of total night you got only on worlds where there was no artificial ambient light anywhere on the horizon.

"It's dark," she said, stating the crashingly obvious but scared enough to want to hear her own voice and Jack's.

"Ssh!" Sharply.

A tiny light flicked on, and Jack's face flared out of the darkness. Lit from underneath, he was all shadows and seriousness. He touched her wrist.

"Over this way."

She followed him blindly a few feet towards a wall and an empty crumbling doorway. They were back amidst the ruins of the Powell Estate.

"About ninety seconds to go," he murmured, encouraging her to crouch down. "This'll give us some cover if the Daleks come prowling."

Another light bobbing ahead gave her a momentary shock, but it turned out to be Commander Harrow, semi-dragging Adam with her.

"We can't be out here at night!" he protested in a panicked whisper. "That's when they patrol! For God's sake let's get to the bunker!"

"Won't matter in, let's see – thirty-nine seconds."

"Keep quiet or I'll stun you," said Commander Harrow. "We only need your resonance pattern to make this work." She jammed a gun against Adam's neck.

"Got a physical fix," Jack muttered. "It's three point six metres ahead of us in that direction. Breaking cover in five."

"Captain," said the Commander sharply.

It was a warning. The darkness was broken again by a wavering orange light, the silence by a distant but distinctive whirring of motors.

"Dalek!" gasped Adam.

"It's miles away. Going in five."

"It'll see you!" Adam cried. "They can detect movement thirty metres across clear ground!"

Jack ignored him, concentrating with a frown on some instrument he was holding, and Rose saw Commander Harrow yank Adam's handcuffs to warn him to stay silent. The Commander was a small woman, but she looked extremely tough.

With silent, practised movements, Jack snaked out from behind the wall and bounded into the open ground. Lit by the glow of his hand-held device, he looked horribly exposed.

The distant orange light stilled.

"It's detected him," said Adam with a groan. "Well, I warned him. We need to get underground _now_!"

"Just wait," hissed Rose. "Watch."

The light started to move towards them.

Jack was punching buttons on the device. "Opening the portal."

"Captain!" said the Commander. "Extend the field, take us all through. That thing is going to attack us."

"I don't think there's enough power, ma'am."

"We've got to try."

"Yeah," said Jack. "Rose – here – now. Quick!"

Rose darted to join him.

"No! No!" Adam screamed, as Commander Harrow tried to pull him out from behind the cover of the wall.

"Halt!" It was the grating, mechanised tone of a Dalek.

Rose pressed closer to Jack as the machine itself swung round through the shattered arch that had once led into Byron Towers. Illuminated only by the two lights on its dome-shaped head, in the otherwise total darkness it was blazing.

Adam collapsed forward to the ground, sobbing and whimpering, as Commander Harrow let go of him and ran to Jack's side.

"Rose! I love you, Rose!" he cried.

Rose felt Jack's hand on her back, saw Adam's face twist in terror, felt a flare of heat as a bolt seared past her, saw Adam glow and twist and begin to crumple – and then, with no sensation at all, they were bathed in dirty yellow light and staring at a tower block that had blossomed intact from the ground.

And the Doctor was striding towards them, hands deep in his coat pockets, face downcast and peaky.

Two things happened at once. The Doctor looked up, and saw them, and his expression bulged in astonishment. "Rose? _Jack?_ I just – but I just – oh, this has the potential to be not good at all – " And Adam, the older, stockier, silver-haired Adam, stepped out from an alleyway wielding his silly green plastic ray gun. "Er – Adam?"

"I'm surprised you remember, Doctor."

"Well, you know, I never forget a face – but it's interesting that you recognise me, I mean, that's unusual. After all, I looked rather different when we last met."

"I've learned a lot of things, Doctor, since we last – met, you say? Or since, to put it more accurately, you pushed me out of the doors of your ship and abandoned me to a life of misery. I know about the Time Lords, and your ability to change your appearance. I know about their annihilation in the Time War. And I've learned more about the way you treat your so-called companions – the people you pick up, play with and drop again like discarded toys."

"Excuse me?"

"Quit the monologuing and get on with it," Jack muttered.

"The reality field is about to collapse," said Commander Harrow. "Do it!"

Adam raised his ray gun. "This is for everyone you ever destroyed," he said.

Rose had been expecting Jack and his colleague to intervene and arrest Adam before he could fire at the Doctor. Her fingernails bit into her palms and she had to stop herself flinging herself at Adam to deflect the beam. Instead of stepping forward, Jack coolly levelled what looked like a small rod towards the pair of them and suddenly, Adam wasn't there at all.

The Doctor was a few feet back.

He stopped, and looked around, and rubbed the back of his neck, and saw them.

"What – " he began.

"Go," said the Commander.

And they were back on the time ship.

Rose had been on the point of running towards the Doctor, despite Jack's firm hand on her arm. He relaxed his grip and she stumbled a little as the rubbery floor of the ship replaced the concrete. "Doctor!"

"He should be OK now," said Jack, joining the Commander at the instrument panel. "We're just checking."

"Normality restored one hundred per cent! Back on track!" Commander Harrow cried. "Damage at the pinch point zero zero three, oh that's well within parameters." Her rather severe features were animated, and she actually broke into a smile. "Good work, Captain."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"That was close."

Having managed to avoid the indignity of losing her footing, but feeling light-headed, Rose sank down onto the soft chair. "What happened?" she demanded.

"We pinched a few seconds out of time," said Jack, making a pincer motion with his fingers. "We put it in a loop. It's the best we can do. In those three seconds or so, Mitchell is always raising the annulment device, always firing it at your friend. The beam never hits. It's crude, maybe, but it works with minimal damage to the timeline. Not enough to cause any impact. Usually the people involved never realise anything's happened."

"The Doctor did."

"Yeah, I saw that. Pity I won't remember it. Pity I won't remember _him_. Can't even look forward to it." He grinned.

"Adam… the Dalek killed him."

"Won't have happened now," said Commander Harrow. "He'll be reintegrated, along with anyone else who died in the damaged timeline who shouldn't have."

"But Adam… the older Adam… where is he?"

"He's trapped forever in the loop we created," said Jack.

"That's horrible."

"What he tried to do was horrible."

It didn't make Rose feel any better about it. "I want to go home," she said. A bleakness had come over her, a trapped helpless feeling, a sudden realisation that she was still, however gently, being held prisoner. Her stomach felt achy and she was tired in the way you could only be after the release of long-held tension.

"We have to get Mitchell's ship back to base and you need to report for memory adjustment, Captain," said Commander Harrow. "Debrief her, and put her back where she belongs."

She almost didn't dare open her eyes this time, as the getting-familiar spin of matter transportation giddied through her head and steadied.

"It's OK," said Jack's voice. "You can look."

It was the Powell Estate, more or less where they had been before, across the concourse from her own block of flats on a grey, blowy February morning. Never had the rain-stained concrete, the swirls of litter and the brave patches of grass looked so welcoming. Over in the distance she could see fifteen-year-old Haley Clarkson pushing her baby along in a pram.

"Is this real?" she asked, hesitant even to move.

"As real as you're gonna get."

She turned around. There was the TARDIS almost right behind her, solid and blue and the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

"Doctor!"

She didn't have her key. She had no idea what had happened to her own clothes, the ones she had folded over an upholstered chair in a bedroom in Chelsea in another reality. It was in the pocket of those jeans. She hammered on the door, which was unyielding and silent.

"Hey," said Jack quietly.

Rose whirled around, and saw the Doctor stumbling and skating down the outside stairs of the flats.

He made a deep noise at the back of his throat as they collided and Rose felt her feet leave the ground. She scrabbled at his hair and, without putting her down, he kissed her hard. Then they clung together, wordless at first.

"Eww, what _are_ you wearing?"

"Old clothes. Shut up."

"They stink. You stink."

"Shut up."

They fell apart, though neither let go entirely.

"Guys," said Jack. "Hate to interrupt, but I gotta go and have my brain fried."

Taking his eyes from her, the Doctor switched his attention decisively to Jack. "Jack – have we met yet, or not?"

"This is Jack from before," said Rose. "When he was a Time Agent."

"Oh, I see. Complicated."

"See you both when I meet you." Jack raised his wrist.

Rose broke away from the Doctor and ran to him, before he had a chance to activate the transporter. "Thank you," she said, and because she suddenly knew that she would never have the chance to again, even if he wasn't going to be able to remember it – she kissed him, on the mouth. He leaned into her, only a little, and held her eyes as she stepped back.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he said, and shimmered out of the air.

"How did you know I was there?"

"I sensed it. Seriously. A bit weird, that – doesn't always happen, hasn't in a while. It was just a feeling that I ought to go and look outside, and – well. There you were. With Jack. Your mother, though – "

They were halfway up the steps. He nodded upwards and made a face.

"How long was I gone? I've totally lost track."

"Thirty two hours and seventeen minutes. A night, a day, another night, half a morning. The night you disappeared – I was on my way back to the TARDIS when I saw you right over there, with Jack, and Adam Mitchell, and another woman – momentarily, just a glimpse, then you all vanished."

"Yeah."

"Well, given that I'd just seen you off to bed in the opposite direction, and we won't meet Adam for another five years, and Jack – well, Jack shouldn't really be around at all, I had just the slightest idea that something might be wrong. I hotfooted it back up to your mum's place, she said you'd just got in and gone straight to bed, but when we looked in your room you weren't there. Cue much confusion."

"Mum probably just thought I'd done a bunk to get my head together."

"Your mother had various theories, most of which featured me as the principal villain. She wasn't terribly interested in the fact that I'd seen an apparition of you." His hand went up to his face.

Rose stopped and looked at him more closely. Before, she'd gazed into his eyes. Now she noticed that he had a red and black bruise across his cheekbone. The skin was broken and grazed, caked with a scab of blood. "Did she hit you?"

"It was partly an accident. Partly. I don't think she meant to draw blood."

"My mum hit you!"

"You're not supposed to laugh! You're supposed to be concerned, dab my wounds with a handkerchief, perhaps."

"I haven't got a handkerchief. I've barely got a jumper!"

"So before we get bombarded by awkward questions, perhaps we ought to get our stories straight. Where were you?"

"It's more like, where were _you_. Don't you remember Adam coming at you with a big green gun?"

"No. I know something happened to time, though. It's an unmistakeable feeling, like goosebumps. Someone or something punctured a hole in time. A tiny one, a little stitch."

"Yeah. That was Jack and the other time agent."

"They really shouldn't do that, you know."

"They saved your life! They saved Earth! They knew what they were doing."

"They're kids playing firemen in a nuclear reactor," he said sternly. Then he sighed and spread his arms along the metal railing of the balcony and looked upwards. "But with all of the rest of us gone, what can I do alone?"

"You're not alone," said Rose, quietly. "Not any more. Remember?"

The Doctor's face softened, and he looked at her quizzically with the beginnings of a smile, and brought the back of his hand to touch her cheek.

She knew then that everything was going to be OK.

"Rose! Oh my God, Rose."

Jackie scuttled down the stairs and caught Rose in a fierce hug, which was always like being crushed by pillows.

"What happened to you, sweetheart?" She held her at arm's length. "Where have you been? And what in heaven's name are you wearing?" She wrinkled her nose.

"All right, I can take a hint," said Rose. "Definitely time for a shower and a change then. I'll tell you both everything once you stop holding your noses at me!"

"And tea," said the Doctor. "Jackie, we need a nice hot cup of tea. Several, ideally."

Rose dropped Vinny's jeans and jumper to the bathroom floor with a shudder of relief. As soon as her hand released each garment they seemed to grey momentarily, then vanished right before her eyes.

"Oh. Weird," she said, aloud.

Even weirder, there was blood on the floor where they had been.

It took Rose a moment to register that this was what the darkish mark on the cream tiled floor was. She knelt to examine the sticky patch, and it slipped under her touch and came up bright red on her fingers.

Without thinking, she turned to the sink to rinse her hand and she realised she was stepping in fresh pools of it. Blood was running down her legs.

She opened her mouth to scream for her mother, but no sound came.


	9. Chapter 9

"It was him, it was Adam," she muttered, as the Doctor wrapped his arm around her in the taxi. She was shaking from deep inside, as if she were very cold – actually shuddering. Curiously sensationless and emotionless, but physically shaking and she couldn't stop. "He shot me."

"Shot you?" said Jackie in alarm.

"With a, what did Jack call it, a cellular disruptor. I thought it hadn't hurt me. It just felt numb and I passed out. But I was OK. I thought I was OK."

"You'll be all right, sweetheart." Jackie squeezed her hand. "She'll be all right, won't she?"

The Doctor did not reply, but hugged her shoulders tighter.

There wasn't even that much blood. Rose realised that what had appeared on the bathroom floor after the non-existent jeans melted into nothingness had probably soaked into the fabric for some time previously, without her having been aware of it. The fresh flow wasn't heavy, she was able to staunch it with a pad. But it kept coming relentlessly.

"The baby was holding everything together," she said. She could actually hear the shake in her own voice, thin and wavering. "After Adam'd got rid of you, the world was still all right. It was almost the same as it is now. But after he shot me, it was run by the Daleks!"

"The Daleks won the Time War," said the Doctor, quietly. "And did what they do best – ruthlessly taking over worlds to exploit for resources, slaughtering the population, destroying the infrastructure."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Jackie impatiently. "But your Auntie Irene, she bled through all three of her pregnancies, and there was nothing wrong with her kids. Not so sure about your cousin Rod mind you, but the point is, it doesn't mean you're going to lose the baby, sweetheart." She banged on the window that separated the passenger compartment from the driver. "Can't you go any faster? This is an emergency!"

Rose had a feeling that it wasn't going to matter how soon they got there.

Casualty on a Tuesday morning wasn't busy, and they were seen almost straight away by a brusque triage nurse who tried to make them go away.

"Bleeding in pregnancy is common enough. There's not much we can do for you here anyway. Go home, put your feet up, and if it hasn't stopped by tomorrow, make an appointment with your GP or midwife."

"We need to see a doctor, right now," said the Doctor.

"Yeah!" said Jackie. "What kind of a hospital is this? It says accident and emergency over the door – are you saying that my daughter isn't an emergency? I've seen the cases you have in here at night – drunks who can hardly put one foot in front of the other, falling and splitting their heads open – you treat them, you can treat my daughter!"

With a very definite sigh of exasperation, the nurse ordered them to return to the waiting area.

Rose looked at the hard blue lino floor, with funny flecks in it like bits of glitter, and the burst-open vinyl cushions on the bolted-down chairs, and the stacks of tattered copies of Woman's Own, Mother & Baby, Golfing World.

"I've travelled to a hundred galaxies and we still have to wait on the NHS," said the Doctor, getting up and beginning to pace. "I'm going to go and hurry them along."

"Leave it," said Rose. "'S OK. Someone'll come."

"That's the trouble with you lot, you know, just sitting here accepting this. You'd never get away with this kind of service on say, Ragalosh IV."

"Well we're not bloody on Rago-wotsit," Jackie snapped. "This is Walthamstow."

Rose was thankful that before the Doctor had the chance to expand on the inadequacies of Earth and rile her mother up more, they were summoned to see a doctor whose name badge identified her as Dr Pathil.

She was much more sympathetic, but had essentially the same thing to say. "It's not that uncommon to get some bleeding in pregnancy, and the majority of women who do, go on to have perfectly healthy babies. You'll have to wait and see what happens over the next couple of days."

"That's it?" said the Doctor. "Wait and see?"

"You can try lying down with your feet propped up, but the plain truth is, if you are going to miscarry, then there's precious little that can be done to prevent it. Sadly, miscarriage is very common. About one in four first pregnancies end that way, I'm afraid."

"I want a scan," said Rose.

"Well, your GP or midwife can make you an appointment."

"No, I want one now! I want to see if the baby's still – " She broke off, and stared the poster of a nutritional pyramid on the wall behind Dr Pathil's desk. A tiny bar of chocolate balanced improbably on a mound of pineapples and piles of rice. "I had an accident, I'm worried it might have harmed it."

"The foetus is very well protected, you know. Short of major physical trauma, you're most unlikely to have done it any damage. And you don't look like you've suffered major physical trauma." She smiled.

The Doctor leaned over Rose's shoulder and said in a low intense voice, "Dr Pathil, I think you should do what she wants. You do have an ultrasound scanner in this building?"

"Well yes of course, but there are procedures for booking its use, you can't just walk into A&E and – " She stopped and frowned at the wallet the Doctor had flipped open and held forward to her gaze.

"We'd like a scan, now," he repeated, quietly.

"Just one moment, sir." She left the room in a hurry.

"The cheek!" said Jackie. "What do we pay our taxes for?"

"Who does she think we are?" asked Rose.

"Actually, I've no idea," said the Doctor, tucking the psychic paper back into his jacket. "But it made her jump. Just act important!"

For the second time in what was really only twenty-four hours, Rose found herself lying falt on a couch in a darkened ultrasound cubicle with her top hitched up and jelly rubbed on her stomach. Although this time the Doctor was with her, and he held her hand as she'd longed for before, she felt no pleasure in the contrast. When the radiologist pressed the scanner to her abdomen, a spear of terror pierced through her numbness.

The Doctor let go of her hand, whipped on his glasses, and peered at the little screen.

"There's the head," said the radiologist, "and an arm. There's the curve of the spine."

"It's still there, it's OK!" cried Rose, jerking up into a semi-sitting position. The picture spun into disarray.

"Keep still please," said the radiologist quietly. She found the image again.

"Yes! Look!" said Jackie.

"It's not moving, is it," said the Doctor, after the radiologist had scanned the short length of the baby's body – so very clear and definite an image to Rose, now that she had learned to see it.

"I can't find a heartbeat, I'm afraid."

There was an awful silence in the little room.

The Doctor had taken off his glasses, and looked round to Rose with his eyes dark.

She stared back. It was the shared understanding of something already known.

"You should've done what they said, sweetheart, you should have stayed and had the operation, they were going to fit you in right away."

"Mum, I don't want anyone mucking about with me any more. I want to be left alone."

"But you could get an infection, they said! You tell her!" She rounded on the Doctor.

"It's up to Rose," he said. He was gazing away, out of the window of the taxi.

Rose had drawn herself over onto the other seat, her coat wrapped around her arms, keeping away from for no other reason she could rationalise beyond, she didn't want to be touched. It was if she could hold herself still and keep the baby inside her, this baby that had only been a desperately awkward circumstance two days ago. It had been, in fact, nothing more than another potential threat to her relationship with the Doctor. And she hated herself for that.

She watched him, as the rain-streaked windows flashed past blurred lights and colour. His face was arched away from her, his hand was resting on one knee, his manic energy was stilled.

"Fat lot of good you are," said Jackie. "This is your fault, you know."

"Mum…" Rose muttered.

"Oh yes, everything's my fault," said the Doctor, and it wasn't even with a tone of sarcasm or antagonism. He said it simply, reflectively, as if he wasn't even talking to Jackie at all.

Despite everything, exhaustion took over and she fell asleep as soon as she shut her bedroom door on the both of them and collapsed under the duvet.

She woke up in pain, her stomach cramping in deep, vicious waves. When she staggered as quietly as she could to the bathroom – the bedside clock said it was three fifteen am – she found that the flow of blood was much heavier. It had in fact soaked through to her pyjama bottoms. She screwed them into a ball, buried them at the bottom of the laundry basket, and changed into an old flannel pair. Then she went in search of some painkillers. Her mother kept things like that in a cupboard in the kitchen, since she had filled the actual medicine cabinet in the bathroom with junk like dewaxing strips.

As she crept through the flat's tiny hallway she noticed a light on under the door to the living room, and heard a low murmur of sound.

The Doctor was wide awake, sprawled into the corner of the sofa, watching middle of the night rubbish on TV with the volume turned way down.

He acknowledged her with an arch of his eyebrows then gestured at the screen. "Extraordinary thing, this. She's complaining that her husband has three other wives in various parts of the country, but it's quite clear from looking at him that he's a Teluvian."

"A what?"

"Come here. Look. A Teluvian. They're a species of sentient fungi who can adapt and imitate other lifeforms, but they always have that tell-tale grey sheen around the ears. You see? Teluvians have no interest in sexual activities with animal lifeforms at all. I wonder what he's up to."

Lumbering, balloon-like Americans clad in jogging suits were hurling abuse at each other across the strapline MY HUSBAND HAS THREE OTHER WIVES.

"He just looks like a fat American slob to me."

"It's the ears."

"I think you're making it up."

"Well, it's this or – actually, five hundred and seventeen other channels." He began channel-flipping. "Funny how they all seems to show the same thing at this time of night."

"You didn't go back to the TARDIS then."

"Oho, no, tried that last time and you disappeared."

"_You_ disappeared, you mean."

"I thought I'd better stick around and make sure you didn't get into any more trouble."

"Me? Huh." She couldn't manage anything wittier as another wave of pain struck. She leaned forward, fixing her eyes on an old wine stain on the carpet, trying not to let him see.

That was pointless, since he seemed to be able to sense it. She flinched as she felt his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"'S not your fault."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yeah, a bit. It's going now. I came to get a neurofen or something."

"Hang on."

He darted out of the room and she listened to clattering in the kitchen, just beyond the hatch which her mother conscientiously closed at night. He came back with some pills and a glass of water and she took them, with an odd feeling. He had never ministered to her before, never looked after her in mundane ways. She was rarely ill and she didn't think the Doctor ever was.

"You should go back to bed," he said.

"I'd rather stay with you."

"And so you shall. Come on."

This was something she never imagined would happen in her mum's flat – the Doctor with her, in her own bed. There was scarcely room, but she didn't care. She curled up against the pain and he enveloped her from behind, wrapping her in warmth and comfort. He kissed the angle of her jaw, then settled his head against her neck. She could feel the coolness of his breath steady against her cheek. His hands laced tightly into hers.

"I can't sleep," she said.

"Try."

"I can't. I keep thinking."

"That's dangerous, that is."

"Talk to me. Take my mind off it."

"Talk? To order? I mean I know usually you can't shut me up, but somehow being ordered to talk makes me wonder if I have anything to say."

"Tell me about your kids." Rose stemmed this babble with a tug on his hands. Her heart jumped as she said it, but if was ever going to ask him about it, it was now. Now, when everything seemed shattered and strange and lying around them.

There was only the briefest of silences against her cheek. "Kid. Singular. Only one, a son. Though I did have a granddaughter too."

"You had a _what_?"

"Granddaughter!" he repeated in a slightly wounded tone. "I'm an old man, Rose. When are you going to believe that?"

"Maybe when you stop looking so young and hot."

"Hot, eh? Well, I try. I was closer to her, really, in the end, than I was to my son. I ended up bringing her up, more or less, you see."

"Why, what happened to your son and his – " She didn't complete the sentence with 'wife'. She had no idea whether Time Lords even had marriage.

"They didn't die or anything – it was very complicated – Time Lord stuff. I had to get off my homeworld in a hurry, and she came with me. We travelled together – oh, for ages."

"What happened to her?"

"She met a man she wanted to stay with. On Earth, as it happens. She grew up."

"What about… you son's mum?"

"Oh, _she_ died." He said it casually, but with an emphasis of finality that Rose knew signalled the end of that conversation.

The already unpleasant background ache intensified to a pitch of pain, and Rose held her breath as it gripped her. The neurofen had made no sodding difference whatsoever.

Of course, they were all dead now. What a stupid thing to have brought up. She tensed her muscles, trying to displace the pain through her fingers and toes.

"What your mum said was right though."

"Uh?"

"It is my fault. If I hadn't lost my temper with Adam, this wouldn't have happened."

She breathed out again as the cramp receded. "Yeah well. No, actually. You shouldn't have done it and I shouldn't have let you."

"Maybe this sounds like a cop-out, but it's hard sometimes to relate to things I did in a previous body. Would I have done that now? I don't know that I would've. Yeah, I'd probably blow my top at him, but I don't think I'd just have kicked him out and left him to deal with the consequences. I'd probably get his head fixed _then_ kick him out. Too late now."

"Well, he got you back. He killed your baby."

"I know," said the Doctor simply.

Oddly, now that she had said it out loud, and got an acknowledgement from the Doctor, Rose felt a little better. She shifted round in the tiny bed that was filled by the pair of them, trying to twist away from the pain and wanting anyway to look into his face. "Couldn't it… you know… do what you did?"

"Regenerate? No, the ability to regenerate only kicks in after adolescence. Babies and children can't." He squeezed her. "But, you know something, it kept you safe. If you hadn't acquired immunity to the timeshift, Jack might never have found the fracture point in time to undo the damage."

"So next time I want to get stuck in an alternative reality, I'd better get knocked up by a Time Lord first?"

"Drastic but effective, apparently."

She curled her legs up again as another cramp took hold. It was getting worse, even though the Doctor holding her was immensely soothing. Freezing sweat broke out on her forehead. "_Fuck_."

"Not now, not a good idea. I mean apart from anything else it would wake your mum up."

She would normally have laughed but her sense of humour was stretched tight into intense irritation for a couple of moments. She pushed him away and gritted her teeth until the spasm died down.

"Sorry," she said, and pulled him close again.

"Maybe try to sleep. Sleep is good."

She didn't argue, but she knew that she had no hope of sleeping until this stopped hurting, and she had a horrible idea of what would have to happen before it did. Time to approach other distracting topics, while she was at it. "You know you said that Jack stayed behind on Platform One to help rebuild Earth?"

"Er, what?"

"That's what you told me."

"When?"

"Just after you – changed."

"Oh God. Never listen to a word I say under those circumstances. Seriously. If you're around when I regenerate again, disregard all conversation for at least twenty-four hours afterwards. If I'm capable of talking at all."

"So he didn't. I thought it sounded odd. Why didn't he come with us, then?"

The Doctor blinked slowly. "Rose, Jack's dead."

She stared.

"I thought you knew. I'm sorry."

"No! I didn't know because you never fucking _told me_!"

"The Daleks killed him. He held them off me right to the end."

"So why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"I… thought you knew."

"You don't – think – you might've – noticed me – crying…" God, he was absolutely hopeless. She batted her hands weakly against his shoulders while he continued to hold her tight, then she gave in and collapsed sobbing into him.

"I've seen so much death, Rose. I've lost almost everyone. I have to forget. What else can I do?"

"I know," she gulped between sobs. "I know."

Despite the pain and the shock of grief and the storm of tears, she did dose off in the end. She became aware of her foggy, sleep state when she awoke in a stupour, filled with unease and urgency.

The Doctor looked like he was asleep too, making his usual gentle snoring noises.

She eased herself out of bed, trying not to disturb him, and crept to the bathroom. It was five thirty-eight, the luminous clock said, and still inky dark outside.

She was afraid that she might have soaked through to her pyjamas again, but the two pads she'd stuffed into an old pair of knickers had coped. Now that she was standing up, though, pooled blood was flowing out freely along with some scary-looking, jelly-like clots.

That was OK though. That's what they'd told her at the hospital, that bits and pieces would come away. She told herself that firmly, as she felt a little faint at the sight of a wobbly mass she'd caught with a wad of toilet tissue.

She was about to flush the mess down the loo when she realised what she was actually looking at.

Rose sat down on the bathroom floor, avoiding her mum's new bath mat so that she wouldn't stain it, and with a finger, gently wiped aside blood from the fluid-filled capsule. Cupped in the palm of her hand was a tiny baby, shrouded in a delicate membrane, intricately detailed, absurdly miniature. It looked perfect.

She sat there for a long time, staring at what would have been – what _was_ – her child, and the second-last of the Doctor's people. She had been dreading just this, but now it had happened she felt nothing but wonder and pity.

Should she show it to the Doctor? She thought about the controlled desolation in his voice when he'd said he'd seen so much death that he had to forget. He had basically forgotten to tell her that a close mutual friend had been gunned down by the Daleks. His wife, if she'd been a wife, had died, his son and granddaughter had been killed – maybe not that long ago, either – in a war that had also wiped out his entire race. He had accidentally left his last lover to die while she was waiting for him to return. She could spare him this sight, she could take it onto herself. For sure, he would never ask.

She didn't want him to see it. If it caused him pain, he might turn some of that pain in her direction and shut down and move away. She trusted him to die for her, but she didn't entirely trust him to stay with her.

"I'm sorry, baby," she whispered, and wrapped it in clean tissue, and flushed the tiny corpse away.

Deadened with relief, still aching, she tidied up the rest and padded back to bed.

The Doctor stirred. "Feeling any better?" he murmured sleepily.

"Yeah. Quite a bit."

He snuggled around her and fell promptly back to snoring.

She lay awake in his arms until the sun streamed through the curtains.

Her mother caught her packing just as she was pulling the last strap of her rucksack tight. It wasn't that Rose had intended to sneak off without saying goodbye, it was just that she'd not been looking forward to an argument and so had been putting it off by making her preparations quietly.

Jackie folded her arms and shook her head. There wasn't even any need for a verbal opening.

"Mum, it's not like I wasn't going to go away again," she said, forestalling it.

"Oh, I know that."

"I'm OK now."

"Are you?" Jackie closed the door. "It wasn't just a miscarriage, was it, not a normal one. Someone shot you, someone caused it."

Rose had no comeback to that. She clutched her rucksack in front of her defensively.

"Well, doesn't that make you stop and think?"

"Mum – what do you want me to do, leave him and go back to my job in the shop?"

"Why does it always have to be one or the other? Why doesn't he do what you want instead, for a change? Ask yourself that, Rose."

"What, do you think I haven't?" She faced her in the doorway. "He'd never going to change, Mum. And I'm staying with him anyway." She brushed past her, and didn't look back.

The Doctor was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, squinting up. He looked surprised when she said, "Right then, let's go."

"Your mum not coming to see us off?"

"She's in a huff."

"Fair enough." He turned on his heel and hooked her arm, and they headed towards the TARDIS.

"You don't have to worry about it happening again, by the way."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Because I got sorted out with the Pill. When I was at the clinic last week."

"It doesn't matter."

"What doesn't matter?"

"Doesn't matter if it does happen again. It's fine."

He spoke quickly, unemotionally, squinting at the rain, but the very casualness of his words meant, she knew, that he was probably saying something difficult. Quite unexpectedly, her heart glowed. She didn't want to spoil the moment by lading it with emotion or even, really, reacting much. But she squeezed his hand and said, "Nah. I'm too young to be a mum yet, really."

"I thought the average age round this neck of the woods was fourteen?"

"Anyway, we've got the rest of my life."

"True," he said, more distantly. They had reached the doors of the TARDIS. "Is your mother really not coming or have we got to stand here in the rain for the next hour while she unhuffs?"

"Tell you what though, you said there was a storm coming."

"I did, didn't I."

"Well…" She fiddled with the knot of his tie, which never seemed to go on straight. "It's passed now."

"I hope so."

They both looked round together at the cry from the distant balcony, and stepped apart to await the onslaught.


End file.
